Senator Elizabeth Warren has continued her vocal opposition to cryptocurrencies, despite losing some of her legislative backing.
On July 25, during a Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing, Warren raised alarms about the national security risks posed by foreign-owned crypto mining operations.
Warren argued that these operations could be exploited by foreign entities to monitor US military activities and jeopardize the nation’s energy infrastructure. She described these mining facilities as environmentally damaging and prone to causing power grid failures due to their high energy consumption.
The senator also expressed concerns about how foreign buyers use cryptocurrencies to acquire mining operations in the US, bypassing traditional financial regulations. She cited a case where a Chinese investor used digital assets to secretly purchase a $6 million mining site in Texas.
Warren is advocating for tighter anti-money laundering laws to address these issues, but her efforts face diminishing support. Republican Senator Roger Marshall recently withdrew his backing from the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act (DAAMLA), a bill he co-sponsored with Warren in 2022. This leaves 18 lawmakers in favor of the bill. Critics argue that the legislation could stifle the growth of the crypto sector.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has spotlighted a significant acceleration in institutional crypto adoption, driven largely by the surging popularity of exchange-traded funds and increased use of Coinbase Prime among major corporations.
Jefferies chief market strategist David Zervos believes an upcoming power shift at the Federal Reserve could benefit U.S. equity markets.
Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto custody bank, is urging its institutional clients to move away from major stablecoins like USDC, Agora USD (AUSD), and Usual USD (USD0), recommending instead a shift to the Global Dollar (USDG) — a stablecoin issued by Paxos and backed by a consortium that includes Anchorage itself.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has voiced concerns over the rise of zero-knowledge (ZK) digital identity projects, specifically warning that systems like World — formerly Worldcoin and backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman — could undermine pseudonymity in the digital world.