Apple, Microsoft or another one of the world’s
biggest stocks.
“There’s something about crypto that scares
people,” said Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury
Group, one of the earliest Bitcoin miners, while
saying the country doesn’t need to add another
regulator to watch over crypto. “I don’t know
what it is, maybe it’s just because it’s new.”
Brooks was formerly the acting head of the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency,
which regulates the banking industry, when
Donald Trump was president.
One big criticsm lobbed at cryptocurrencies
is how much electricity they devour. The
mining of Bitcoin alone uses roughly as much
energy in a year as all the gold mining around
the world, or roughly as much as Norway or
Ukraine, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin
Electricty Consumption index. Only a small
slice of Wednesday’s discussion centered on
that, though.
The executives testifying at the hearing were
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin-issuer Circle;
Bankman-Fried of FTX; Brooks of Bitfury
Group; Charles Cascarilla, CEO of blockchain-
infrastructure firm Paxos Trust Company;
Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development
Foundation, which works in payments and
Haas of Coinbase.