Sam Bankman-Fried, the foremost antagonist of cryptocurrency, has missed a critical deadline to confirm his attendance at an impending Senate Committee hearing.
The former FTX CEO failed to respond to a Senate Banking Committee request for testimony on December 14 by the deadline of Thursday, December 8, 5:00 p.m. ET. The potential for a congressional subpoena has been created by this.
The request was addressed in a statement issued on December 8 by Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and Pat Toomey, the committee’s ranking member.
Related: Bankman-Fried, the inventor of FTX, will appear before the United States House of Representatives.
Consumers have suffered significant financial losses as a result of FTX’s collapse, which also had an impact on other segments of the cryptocurrency market. Sam Bankman’s misbehaviour at Fried’s at FTX needs to be addressed, they said, before adding:
The Committee has asked him to testify at our upcoming hearing on FTX’s collapse, and if he refuses, we may take further action.
The meeting, titled “Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and the Harm to Consumers,” will be streamed on December 14, according to the committee’s official website.
Hilary J. Allen, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, and Ben McKenzie, an actor and novelist, are the only two witnesses whose attendance at the hearing has been confirmed thus far.
Allen is a researcher whose work examines how new financial technologies affect the stability of the financial system. McKenzie, an anti-crypto actor who is now a commentator, portrayed a troubled kid in the American television show “The O.C.”
About the pointlessness of the witness selection, Messari’s founder, Ryan Selkis, said:
The Senate Banking FTX hearing is a total farce that makes fun of the entire process.
Despite the fact that it would have been a distraction, the Senate chose the former child star of the OC and a crypto-averse scholar instead of me.
an additional waste of taxpayer funds
By Ryan Selkis, December 9, 2022 (@twobitidiot).
McKenzie has been contacted by Cointelegraph for comment, but as of the time of publication, no response had been received.
In addition to the hearing with the Senate Banking Committee on December 14, Bankman-Fried has also been asked to attend a hearing with the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on December 13 titled “Investigating the Collapse of FTX.”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters initially invited Bankman-Fried to the hearing via a tweet, but he appeared to decline the offer on December 5, saying that he wasn’t sure what would occur by the hearing date, “but when it does, I will testify.”
Related: Mike Novogratz says that Bankman-Fried is “delusional” and is going to prison.
In response, Waters said that if Bankman-Fried did not agree to speak voluntarily at the hearing, “a subpoena is clearly on the table.”
The fall of SBF’s FTX empire has sparked a wave of criticism from American lawmakers and authorities that threatens to suffocate the budding crypto asset market.