Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., on Thursday told Newsmax that cryptocurrency exchanges must be regulated after the collapse of FTX.
Braun told "National Report" that he attended the congressional hearings on FTX, the cryptocurrency company headed by Sam Bankman-Fried that recently declared bankruptcy.
"I don't know that we'll get to the bottom of it here today, but I will say that we've got something instructive," Braun said.
He added: "Look back generally, two decades ago when we went through the whole dot-com scenario, you remember the collapse there it was due to the uncertainty surrounding that new dynamic that would have been dot-com companies, we now have kind of blended that into the landscape, but there was a lot of trial and tribulation there."
Braun said: "Here it's more complicated. We don't know if we're dealing with a medium of exchange, we don't know if it's a commodity, we don't know if it's a security. And then you get characters like Sam showing up, and I don't know that you could write a novel that would have more peculiarities to it. So what we're going to try to do today, I think is distill where we should be.
"I personally think it's got characteristics of both. Think of any of the entities involved like the exchange, that's clearly a security kind of analog, the currencies themselves … look more like a commodity, and I can tell you for cryptocurrencies, you generally can't have the volatility that have been associated with them because a currency is a medium of exchange.
"Nobody wants a medium of exchange that could be worth 50% less a week or two later — lot of things need to sort themselves out. It does need to be regulated, something that looks like it's got this much potential from the blockchain technology, to all the currencies. I was looking a moment ago how they're 50 or 60 exchanges that arisen."
Braun concluded: "We'll have to do something to regulate it, or I don't think consumers will have confidence in it in the long run. But we don't want to smash the fact that it's decentralizing something that has generally been a sovereign currency, and some of that looks questionable down the road."
Braun also confirmed his decision to run for Indiana governor, saying, "I filed the paperwork to do it a couple of days ago, and I am going to go back and run for governor."
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