This year’s high-profile crash of crypto exchange FTX completely transformed the landscape for fintech companies, disrupting markets around the world as investors have scrambled to reclaim funds lost in the collapse of the company headed by Sam Bankman-Fried. Unsurprisingly, there has been no small amount of finger-pointing in the wake of FTX’s downfall, with regulators and industry experts seeking an explanation for how the company was able to fail so spectacularly.
The latest such finger was pointed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives: in a recent interview, Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) blasted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for failing to monitor FTX appropriately. The SEC has been at the forefront of responding to the FTX crash over the last several months, filing charges against Bankman-Fried for violations of a variety of anti-fraud acts. However, for Sessions and other voices in Congress, this action is too little, too late.
“We need to look at what the Securities and Exchange Commission was doing,” Sessions said. “The SEC was asleep at the wheel for these billions of dollars that we now find out about a year later.”
