• The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs received inaccurate testimony on Bitcoin from actor Ben McKenzie and Professor Hillary J. Allen.
• Senator Sherrod Brown later revealed the hearing was intended to “educate the public” on the dangers of cryptocurrencies and floated the idea of banning them altogether.
• The hearing lacked witnesses with actual expertise in the field of financial technology and resulted in basic errors in the testimony.
On December 14, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs held a hearing entitled “Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and Harm to Consumers.” The hearing was intended to “educate the public” on the dangers of cryptocurrencies and floated the idea of banning them altogether. To that end, the committee invited actor Ben McKenzie and Professor Hillary J. Allen to testify on Bitcoin.
Mr. McKenzie, who has starred in “The O.C.,” “Gotham” and “Southland,” lacks the qualifications and expertise one would expect for being called before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to testify on the inner workings of financial technology. As a result, his testimony was inaccurate and riddled with basic errors. He claimed, for instance, that Bitcoin cannot work as a medium of exchange because it cannot scale, and that the Bitcoin network can only process 5 to 7 transactions a second, whereas Visa can handle tens of thousands. He further argued that to facilitate that relatively trivial amount of transactions, Bitcoin uses an enormous amount of energy, equal to the electrical energy consumed by the country of Argentina.
The hearing lacked witnesses with actual expertise in the field of financial technology and resulted in basic errors in the testimony. On December 18, the Senate Banking Committee Chair Senator Sherrod Brown divulged on “Meet The Press” that the hearing was intended to “educate the public” on the dangers of cryptocurrencies and floated the idea of banning them altogether. This coincided with Elizabeth Warren’s new financial surveillance bill, which is a disaster for privacy and civil liberties.
The inaccurate testimony provided to the Senate Banking Committee on Bitcoin has the potential to influence public opinion and policy decisions in a way that could be detrimental to the cryptocurrency industry. It is therefore of paramount importance that the committee receive accurate and informed testimony on the topic in the future. By doing so, the committee would ensure that the public is properly informed on the potential benefits and risks of cryptocurrencies, enabling them to make informed decisions.