Biden Nominee Saule Omarova Worries Bitcoin Might Undermine National Security
Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s Comptroller of the Currency nominee, claimed Thursday bitcoin and digital currencies might undermine national security.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), a pro-cryptocurrency lawmaker, asked Omarova during her Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing if she believed if bitcoin and other digital currencies undermined national security.
Omarova said she worries that digital currencies undermine public policies, including national security.
Lummis asked Omarova, “Do you think that bitcoin undermines national security?”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) speaks during Dr. Saule Omarova’s nomination hearing to be the Comptroller of the Currency with the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill on November 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Omarova said, “I would worry if all of our financial transactions were up to some blockchain system, where you know various actors might actually be located in other countries not particularly friendly to us, control the functioning of that system.”
Despite Omarova’s concerns, the United States is the number one miner of bitcoin in the world, meaning there is little to worry about other countries or private actors manipulating bitcoin.
America became the top destination for bitcoin miners after China cracked down on cryptocurrency mining this year.
In fact, resource-rich and low-energy price states such as Texas, Washington, and other states have become a mecca for bitcoin mining.
“The whole narrative of China controls bitcoin is now completely destroyed,” Boaz Sobrado, a London-based financial data analyst, said.
Omarova could seek to heavily regulate the digital currency industry as exhibited by her academic writings.
The OCC charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, and she could unwind the charter approvals for cryptocurrency companies such as Protego, Paxos, and Anchorage.
Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s pick as Comptroller of the Currency, previously authored a thesis on Marxism, the only copy of which has reportedly been destroyed by Moscow State University. https://t.co/kn7bgpx5bJ
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 23, 2021
She wrote in “Technology v. Technology: Fintech as a Regulatory Challenge” that the “root of the problem” in the “massive digitization of finance” is the “critical shift in the … balance of power in the financial system” away from government control.
A former senior government official told Breitbart News, the “political left doesn’t like crypto, because right now the left is all about command and control, they want to control your thinking, they want to control your spending, etc. And, crypto doesn’t allow that because there is no person.
The former senior government official said, “It’s a decentralized network for peer-to-peer exchange where nobody can tell you what to spend your money on. That’s a problem. If you believe in controlling people.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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