By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House Financial Services Committee said on Wednesday it plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The committee said it expects to hear from the companies and individuals involved, including FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research, Binance, FTX and related entities, among others.
“The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over one million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds,” Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters said.
Separately, a spokesperson for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown said on Wednesday the panel “is working to schedule a hearing and details are forthcoming.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, leaving an estimated 1 million customers and other investors facing total losses in the billions of dollars. The collapse reverberated across the crypto world and sent bitcoin and other digital assets plummeting.
U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said, “we must get to the bottom of this for FTX’s customers and the American people. It’s essential that we hold bad actors accountable so responsible players can harness technology to build a more inclusive financial system.”
U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow told Reuters on Wednesday that lawmakers are working through details of cryptocurrency legislation after the FTX collapse. “We certainly want to move as fast as we can,” Stabenow said, adding lawmakers “are working on final language.”
Waters said on Wednesday the United States needs “legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight and clear rules of the road.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson in WashingtonAdditional reporting by Chris Prentice in WashingtonEditing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)