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Not long after the cryptocurrency crash in 2022, US Senator Jon Tester summed up the digital currency lacking government oversight or treasury backing like this:
โHe couldn't pass the smell test. "I haven't been able to find anyone who has been able to explain to me what's out there other than synthetics, which doesn't mean anything," Tester said on Meet the Press on December 11, 2022. The cryptocurrency had started the year at a high, but was coming out. 2022 at a quarter of its January value.
"And the problem is that if we regulate it, and I pointed this out to some of the regulators here a week or two ago, if we regulate it, it may give people the ability to think that it's real," Tester said. saying. "I'm not a regulator, and I'm not a financial person who regulates, but I don't see any reason why these things should exist."
Still desperate for the legitimacy that comes from being regulated, the cryptocurrency lobby is now responding to skeptics in Congress. As Bloomberg reported last week, big cryptocurrency players have raised $160 million to target vulnerable lawmakers. Tester, as one of the longest-serving Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, is a potential target. Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is another.
Federal election records show that the Fairshake crypto political action committee spent $10 million opposing Democratic Rep. Katie Porter's Senate bid in California.
Tester's recent voting record on cryptocurrencies has been favorable to the industry. In May, Tester joined Republicans, including Montana Sen. Steve Daines, in thwarting a Securities and Exchange Commission notice that recommended banks record crypto assets held by customers as liabilities and emphasized the need to disclose the boom and bust risk associated with the value of cryptocurrencies.
As Bloomberg reports, crypto PACs do business in dollars, not cryptocurrencies.
