Jake Auchincloss: 'We Cannot Allow This Administration To Continue To Grift Off Of Blockchain'

In House floor remarks on Wednesday, Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) spoke about blockchain grifting.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1664, the Deploying American Blockchains Act of

00:102025, which passed under voice vote. This bill gives the Department of Commerce broad authority

00:15to pursue U.S. leadership of blockchain technology. And this is an unusual circumstance because I

00:20actually support the legislation and supported the legislation during the last administration

00:25because we had a secretary of commerce then who was one of the finest public servants that I've had

00:30the pleasure of working with. Now, however, we have a secretary of commerce who is pushing to use

00:37crypto to the benefit of himself and his own family, specifically his son, who is trying to make deals

00:44overseas. And our secretary has strong ties to the stablecoin Tether. He spent 40 years as CEO and

00:51chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of Tether's key investors. He is using his and his family's

00:57weight to pitch Tether to foreign governments across the Middle East, turning public policy into

01:01personal profit. The United States government must be a free and impartial referee. We should not be a

01:06bull or a bear on crypto. We should ensure market integrity, force amplification of the U.S. dollar

01:12as the world's reserve currency. But that becomes impossible when the secretary of commerce is so

01:18conflicted as he is on this matter. And that is on top of the fact that the president himself has been

01:23selling off the presidency with the Trump meme coin. So we cannot allow this administration to

01:29continue to grift off of blockchain. I yield back.