At yesterday’s U.S. House of Representatives Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee hearing on whether digital currencies should be considered money, Representative Brad Sherman said, “We should prohibit U.S. persons from buying or mining cryptocurrencies.” He cited the use of cryptocurrencies for illegal transactions in the Dark Web, money laundering, funding of terrorism, and illegal gambling.
As the news of this statement spread, it did not take long for Crypto-Twitter to react. Some gems from Twitter include this from the person using the Twitter handle @theCryptoDog:
.@BradSherman was so concerned about $crypto users using #cryptocurrency for deceptive and illegal financial activity, yet his top campaign donation came from a company that had to forfeit $13.3 million to the US Government for facilitating illegal gambling. pic.twitter.com/mLn0WHU6jR
— The Crypto Dog? (@TheCryptoDog) July 18, 2018
That’s right, someone with approximately 81.3K followers on Twitter called Representative Sherman out on the fact that banks, including ones who just so happen to be campaign donors, are as capable of enabling fraudulent and illegal financial activity as cryptocurrencies are. As you can imagine, Sherman was not happy about it and promptly sent a Twitter DM demanding that @theCryptoDog stop. It did not take long for the tweet to go the Twitter equivalent of viral and many of the replies indicate that Sherman is not even that admirable of a person, not that the latter should be much of a shock to anyone who pays close attention to the behavior of the typical Congresscritter.
Brad Sherman currently represents California’s 30th district in San Fernando Valley and has been a member of Congress since 1997. So just as a heads-up to any Califonian who intends to vote the next time Sherman is up for reelection, it may be worth considering voting for someone who is more “with it” and has a better understanding of both technological innovations and the ways that economics work in the real world. If he loses the next election, at least he will no longer have to beg some of the more influential figures in the Crypto-Twitter arena to stop exposing his campaign donors.