{"id":12171,"date":"2021-09-16T01:54:09","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T01:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/us-senator-warren-presses-sec-to-address-crypto-exchange-outages-high-transaction-fees-financial-inclusion\/"},"modified":"2021-09-16T01:54:09","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T01:54:09","slug":"us-senator-warren-presses-sec-to-address-crypto-exchange-outages-high-transaction-fees-financial-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/us-senator-warren-presses-sec-to-address-crypto-exchange-outages-high-transaction-fees-financial-inclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"US Senator Warren Presses SEC to Address Crypto Exchange Outages, High Transaction Fees, Financial Inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, to increase oversight of cryptocurrency. She brought up several problems she associates with cryptocurrency that could hurt small investors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Senator Elizabeth Warren Says \u2018There\u2019s a Whole List of Problems With Crypto\u2019<\/h2>\n

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler about several issues regarding cryptocurrency at the Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The senator from Massachusetts began by noting that last Tuesday, \u201cIn a matter of hours, $400 billion in market value disappeared.\u201d She then pointed out that as the prices of cryptocurrencies tumbled, \u201cseveral of the biggest crypto exchanges had outages, which kept customers from making withdrawals or trades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioning how this affects small retail investors, \u201cwho don\u2019t have a lot of money to lose,\u201d Warren described a hypothetical situation. \u201cLet\u2019s say that last Monday I took out the last sliver of my savings. I went on the crypto exchange Coinbase. I bought $100 worth of ether. Then I woke up early on Tuesday morning, I saw that the market looked like it was beginning to tank, and I thought I better sell right now,\u201d she said, adding:<\/p>\n

But when I tried to sell, Coinbase, the exchange, was down. So, Chair Gensler, was there anything I could do to get my money out?<\/p>\n

Gensler replied: \u201cNot at a federal agency because they [Coinbase] haven\u2019t yet registered with us, even though they have dozens of tokens that may be securities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Warren then described another hypothetical situation. \u201cInstead of buying ether on Coinbase last Monday, I decided instead to put that $100 towards buying a new, cool token \u2014 let\u2019s call it \u2018new coin\u2019 \u2014 that was being hyped on Twitter,\u201d she detailed. \u201cNew coin is available only on a \u2018decentralized\u2019 crypto exchange, so to buy it I had to pay a fee, about $20, to the crypto miners who processed the transactions \u2026 Then of course I woke up on Tuesday morning and the market was tanking.\u201d<\/p>\n

She asked Gensler how much she would have to pay the exchange to sell her coins and get back into dollars fast, stating:<\/p>\n

How much would I have to pay to get out of defi on Tuesday to sell my coins. Would I have had to pay a second $20 fee or might I have had to pay even more?<\/p>\n

The SEC chairman promptly replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know because it will be all in the user agreement.\u201d He added that many platforms \u201care only decentralized in name only,\u201d citing that \u201cThere is a user agreement. There\u2019s something you are doing with this platform. There\u2019s a governance token. There\u2019s usually some fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While the SEC chairman stated that he does not know what fee a particular exchange charges, Senator Warren brought up network fees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do know some of the fees from last Tuesday. The fee to swap between two crypto tokens on the Ethereum network was more than $500, obviously way more than the $100 I was trying to trade in the first place,\u201d she exclaimed, noting:<\/p>\n

The question I have is, in the face of these high, predictable fees, small investors could easily get jammed and wiped out entirely.<\/p>\n

Senator Warren then asserted that cryptocurrency is not a path to financial inclusion. \u201cChair Gensler, advocates say crypto markets are all about financial inclusion. But the people who are most economically vulnerable are the ones who are most likely to have to withdraw their money the fastest when the market drops. Does this sound like a path to financial inclusion to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gensler replied: \u201cIt\u2019s a highly speculative asset class. It doesn\u2019t sound like the path that you mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren continued:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a whole list of problems with crypto: unreliable tech, scams, devastating climate impact. But high, unpredictable fees can make crypto trading really dangerous for people who aren\u2019t rich.<\/p>\n

She concluded, \u201cRegulators need to step up to address crypto regulatory gaps,\u201d emphasizing, \u201cChair Gensler, I expect you and the SEC to take a leading role in getting this done.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you think about what Senator Elizabeth Warren said to SEC Chairman Gensler? Let us know in the comments section below.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Bitcoin News
\nRegulation, Coinbase, decentralized exchanges, Elizabeth Warren, elizabeth warren coinbase, ether gas fee, Gary Gensler, high trading fees, small linvestors, Transaction Fees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, to increase oversight of cryptocurrency. She brought up several problems she associates with cryptocurrency that could hurt small investors. Senator Elizabeth Warren Says \u2018There\u2019s a Whole List of Problems With Crypto\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain-news","category-coin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}