House lawmakers known as the “Blockchain Eight” who discouraged a probe of the cryptocurrency industry in March are under fresh scrutiny in the wake of the indictment of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on fraud charges.
Five of the eight lawmakers, from both parties, received campaign donations from FTX executives while expressing concern to the Securities and Exchange Commission last spring that its inquiries into crypto and blockchain companies, reportedly including FTX, were too aggressive.
Their March 16 letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler objected to the “recent trend toward employing … investigative functions to gather information from unregulated cryptocurrency and blockchain industry participants in a manner inconsistent with the Commission’s standards for initiating investigations.