“America to Fall Behind” Warns Congressman Kevin McCarthy if Cryptocurrency is Ignored

Kevin McCarthy, Congressman has warned the treasury of not overlooking Bitcoin as has been the case for quite a while now. He reiterates that Bitcoin was the future and ignoring it would leave America behind.

Member of the Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy in a CNBC interview discussed the scope of Bitcoin in America.

He was posed with a question regarding Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, and Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chairman’s understanding of Bitcoin or other digital assets. What prompted this question was Yellen’s recent comment on Bitcoin being extremely inefficient. Similarly, Powell too in March had made comments regarding crypto’s volatility and it not being suitable as a store of value.

On the other hand, McCarthy has been a long-time supporter of Bitcoin wherein in 2019 he displayed his fondness for the token publicly. He has also expressed his admiration for the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency. While answering the interviewer’s question, McCarthy reinforced his 2019 views and showed his faith in crypto.

He elaborated that it was ignored in hopes that it would vanish but that never happened. He said about the digital assets and Bitcoin that it was a step towards the future and therefore, should not be ignored.

McCarthy even pointed out that Jamie Dimon was wrong about the currency all along and today the latter would agree to it. Jamie Dimon, the Chief Executive Officer of JP Morgan in 2017 while calling Bitcoin a fraud had compared them to tulip bulbs. In fact, he had called the token worse than it. However, today his bank has progressed and sees the institutional change in the demand for Bitcoin. The bank has even gone ahead and propelled its own crypto investment product that will track public firms with exposure to bitcoin.

However, Powell and Yellen have still not taken to Bitcoin and are livid when it comes to the token or digital currency altogether. Powell had called the crypto assets vehicles for speculations thereby emphasizing its unpredictability. He believes that the currency is not rigorously being used as payment.

This comment comes as a surprise since big names like Tesla have started accepting crypto as a mode of payment. Moreover, the list is getting longer each day with more companies offering payments in crypto.

Similar to Powell’s views are that of Yellen who called the asset highly speculative. She even claimed that they were not extensively being utilized as a transmission mechanism. In fact, she even called it an extremely inefficient method of managing transactions. She also warned that this type of currency was majorly used for illegal activities. This is not entirely untrue because a lot of illicit activities have been linked to cryptocurrency and digital assets in the past.

Where on one side cryptocurrency has its advantages on the other side it has its own shares of disadvantages too.