Warren pushes bipartisan bill to regulate crypto firms after FTX collapse

Elizabeth Warren is pressing Congress to adopt new bipartisan legislation which would force crypto firms to abide by the same regulations as banks and corporations in an attempt to crack down on money laundering through digital assets.

The Democratic US senator from Massachusetts is pushing for the new controls on the crypto industry in the wake of the spectacular collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. On Tuesday its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with eight criminal counts including conspiracy to commit money laundering.

An ongoing area of interest to investigators was the vast political contributions made by Bankman-Fried to the Democratic party, as well as to Republicans in the form, he has said, of secretive dark money donations. The Wall Street Journal has calculated that he gave more than $95,000 in direct campaign donations to the same members of the US House financial services committee who are now investigating him.

Even before the implosion of FTX, the treasury department was focusing on the feared risks to national security posed by relatively unregulated digital currency exchanges. In August it moved against Tornado Cash, a virtual currency mixer which it accused of laundering more than $7bn in virtual currency since 2019.

Warren is a former Harvard law professor and expert on consumer protection and economic inequality. She entered the Senate in 2013, where she established herself as a leading progressive critic of corporate largesse and a spirited opponent of Donald Trump.

She made an unsuccessful bid for the White House in 2020.