Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said that U.S. lawmakers don’t need to reinvent the wheel as they consider legislation after the collapse of Samuel Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, Bloomberg News reported. The panel’s hearing on Wednesday is the second this week by Congress to scrutinize the fallout of FTX’s bankruptcy. The company imploded in November, sending shock waves across the industry and fanning criticism of weak oversight. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the U.S. government filed criminal charges amid multiple probes into his possible misconduct. “If we are going to learn from FTX’s meltdown, we must look closely at the risks from conflicts at crypto platforms that combine multiple functions,” Brown said. “It means thinking about the kinds of disclosure that consumers and investors really need to understand how a token or crypto platform works.” Brown said in remarks before the hearing that lawmakers can look at existing banking and securities laws for time-tested approaches as a way of overseeing crypto businesses. Separately, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) said Wednesday they are introducing a bill to address the national-security risks posed by cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The proposed legislation would close loopholes in anti-money-laundering rules and help counter terrorism financing, they said in a statement.
