BlockBeats news: On January 20, the Bloomberg editorial board published an article stating that although the U.S. Congress is attempting to establish a legal framework for digital assets to encourage innovation while curbing illegal activities, these efforts are likely to be ineffective given the weakened authority and insufficient resources of regulatory agencies.
The article mentions that the stablecoin regulatory bill, the "Genius Act," distributes key responsibilities among multiple regulatory agencies. A crucial agency—the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)—has clearly been "severely weakened" after experiencing layoffs and cyberattacks. Another bill, the "Clarity Act," could potentially weaken the SEC's authority by placing most tokens under the jurisdiction of the CFTC. However, the CFTC's budget is only one-sixth of the SEC's, and it also suffers from insufficient staffing and enforcement capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which previously handled consumer complaints related to cryptocurrencies, has been almost "dismantled," further weakening the regulatory framework.
Bloomberg believes that promoting crypto assets toward a broader public and institutional investors without sufficient regulatory capacity could ultimately backfire on the industry once ongoing fraud and criminal issues continue to surface. The article calls for the establishment of a unified trading legal framework covering all hard-to-classify digital assets (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum), jointly developed by the SEC and CFTC, to ensure market stability, investor protection, and proper information disclosure.
The final warning in the commentary stated that the crypto market will continue to face the real risk of "buyer beware" until Congress genuinely empowers regulators with sufficient authority, professional capabilities, and resources.