US House Financial Committee Discusses Cryptocurrencies and ICOs

Regulation 1 min, 39 sec READ

by Ricardo Carrasco

New rules are forthcoming as United States Congress held their third cryptocurrencies hearing in two months while the European Banking Authority and the G20 continued regulatory discussions.

The House Financial Committee of the United States held a hearing on March 14, 2018, on “Examining the Cryptocurrencies and ICO Markets”. This was the first time members of the US Congress formally addressed the regulatory issues related to Initial Coin Offerings. The committee discussed the potential capitalization opportunities of ICOs and cryptocurrencies as well as the need to adapt and to regulate Blockchain-related technologies.

This hearing, the third US congressional event held on cryptocurrencies in the last two months, comes just a few days before the European Banking Authority published a Roadmap highlighting the importance of establishing a FinTech Knowledge repository to enhance collaboration and to promote a climate of neutrality regarding regulatory approaches. The G20 also plans to discuss cryptos this week. A draft communique for the meeting of central bank governors and finance ministers of the G20 to be held in Buenos Aires on March 19-20 showed the financial body intends to call for international standards to enforce stronger monitoring of digital assets and to assess the possible threats digital assets represent for the world´s financial stability.

The congressional hearing was mostly educational, with well-known personalities from the cryptosphere attending as witnesses, including Mike Lempres, chief legal and risk officer at Coinbase; Robert Rosenblum, a partner at the Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonseni Goodrich & Rosati; Dr. Chris Brummer, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center; and Peter Van Valkenburgh, the director of research at Coin Center.

Some important subjects addressed in the hearing included the lack of a framework that could allow regulators to distinguish between securities-related tokens and cryptocurrencies; the need for US crypto exchanges to comply with security and investment related regulations; and how the government should approach regulation without damaging the US´s capacity for innovation and forcing investors to leave the US market.