Brad Sherman is a Bad Guy.

Brad Sherman is a bad guy.

The 20 year congressman, who’s just ascended to Chair the Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets, which oversees the SEC and its self-regulatory bodies like FINRA, is a clever and outspoken critic of crypto in Congress. In fact, just six weeks ago following the Libra hearings, I called him "crypto’s most savvy adversary in Congress.” Now he’s rising further up the leadership ranks.

Here’s what I wrote back in October.

"One of those mafiosos - a senior member of the [Financial Services] committee - had the most cogent and dangerous critique of the day, and he didn’t even ask a question.

• Families save $1000s and the Fed can save $100 billion in interest because of our reserve currency status, and you (Zuck) want to take that privilege away.
• New currencies can make drug dealers 10% more effective - “how many deaths will that add over the next decade?”
• We stand to lose military strength because crypto-currency is the currency of the crypto patriot” (he called out our ability to tame Turkey’s press into Syria with the threat of sanctions).
• “You’ll wait for regulators to sign off, but they are working with old statutes. Your lawyers are going to show you that there’s a loophole in a 1940 Investment Company Act that gets you where you want to go and the regulators can’t stop you, and you’re going to call that regulatory approval. As if the people in 1940 knew what you had in mind. You’ll hire lawyers and lobbyists to prevent that from happening.”
• “You’re going to be making powerful burglary tools only to allow your partners to commit the burglaries. And you have the gall to come here and say you’re going to follow KYC. How do you do this with anonymous accounts?”
• Sherman calls out Zuck for using the economically disenfranchised as a shield for building tools for drug dealers, terrorists, and tax evaders. It was an appropriate call out of bullshit, and though the language was over-the-top, it was effective because our top defense is “freedom is messy, the USG is worse.”

The reason this is so dangerous is that it's mostly true.

But only in the "selective truth" politician-y sort of way that would get you in trouble if you were under oath.

These people run up record no-end-in-sight debts, get nothing done amidst years of partisan infighting to score points for sugar daddy lobbyists they'll join once they "retire", leave the next generation in an impossible financial and geo-political position, and then have the gall to lump everyone working in crypto together with pedos, terrorists, and cheats. All because we have the audacity to work on fallback reserve currency options knowing their mismanagement, dereliction of duty, and outright political cowardice will definitively lead to the end of the dollar as single global reserve in the next decade.

F*ck you, Congressman.

Here’s a bit more about Sherman:

• Crypto stance: Aside from the gems above in the October hearings, Sherman has been regularly critical of Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and ICOs. Wikipedia actually has a great summary: "He started his prepared remarks by saying "Cryptocurrencies are a crock". He further said, on Congressional record, that all Bitcoin does is allow "a few dozen men in my district to sit in their pajamas on their couch all day, and tell their wives they are going to be millionaires". On 18 July 2018, Sheman called for a ban on the dealing in or mining of cryptocurrencies by U.S. Persons; and states use of crypto currencies as a medium of exchange is useful only to individuals facilitating narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and tax evasion."
• Political position: The scary thing here is that he's rising up the ranks in Financial Services more broadly (third in line behind Maxine Waters now on the Democrat side). He's also senior on the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee where he's Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, and the top Democrat on the sub-committee on Asia. He's a hard core environmentalist, so won't like bitcoin's energy usage.
• General likability: In the Washingtonian's 2012 anonymous survey of congressional staff, Sherman was named the second meanest member of the House (that's top 1% mean). He was an outspoken critic of the 2008 financial bailout, so he was unpopular with everyone back then. No idea whether that has changed, but Congressmen typically get more "popular" the longer they stay in power, so it doesn't really matter.
• Electability: Sherman is about as entrenched as they come. He's won 10 straight elections, and already survived two redistrictings, the next of which wouldn't apply until the 2022 election anyway. He won both of those elections handily, and no one has come close to touching him in recent general elections.

In other words, a hard to displace unlikable guy who hates crypto and is in a position to severely harm it, is rising through the ranks during perhaps the most important political period of crypto's lifetime. And is doing so during a time, where Congress is already flexing extra-judicial and extra-legislative muscle to intimidate companies from supporting crypto projects.

If you’re a single issue voter - and I am, because building in crypto is my ongoing multi-decade vote for “other” - you will likely want to make the perplexing decision to vote and lobby for Republican House Reps and Senators, and a young Democratic President. Gridlock with less hostile individual adversaries.

In the meantime, this sonuvabitch Sherman has to go. Wake up and start playing offense.

-TBI


P.S. Here's a link to donate to Coin Center. As you can tell, I probably shouldn't be involved in these back room meetings with Congress because I don't have the patience and have a tough time hiding my disdain.

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