“The fact that SBF was able to do what he did with FTX shows that whatever they have, the current framework isn’t working,” he continued.
Ramaswamy is one of the few politicians to specifically make crypto part of his campaign.
Ramaswamy announced a plan to drastically reduce the SEC‘s staff and loosen regulations on the crypto industry, advocating for most cryptocurrencies to be treated as commodities outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), CoinDesk recently reported.
It’s nothing short of embarrassing that Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, couldn’t even confirm to Congress whether Ethereum is a regulated security,” Ramaswamy said. “This is another example of the administrative state overreaching.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – who originally ran for president as a Democrat and is now a declared independent – proposed exempting bitcoin from capital gains taxes, backing the dollar with assets like gold and bitcoin, and supporting the right to self-custody bitcoin and operate blockchain nodes to strengthen the dollar and promote financial innovation and privacy.
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) were also mentioned during the debate, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saying they would be “dead on arrival” if he’s elected president. CBDCs were apparently one of the hottest issues in Florida politics over the summer, with his office reportedly receiving more calls on the topic than the usual wedge issues.
DeSantis signed a bill purporting to ban CBDCs into law, although experts questioned whether the law would actually do anything.
Later in the debate, Ramaswamy claimed that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was an inside job and that the Great Replacement theory is “a fundamental tenet of the Democratic Party platform.”