Circle CEO Allaire to Congress: Treat Crypto as a New Asset Class

Crypto will take center stage on Capitol Hill for the second time in as many weeks when the U.S. Senate Banking Committee convenes Tuesday to discuss current and potential regulations.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, will testify as a representative of the Blockchain Association trade group. He will be joined by University of California at Irvine School of Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran and Congressional Research Service specialist Rebecca Nelson.

The hearing is set to examine the regulatory questions around the industry and should be fairly broad, unlike the hearings on Facebook’s Libra project earlier this month.

“It’s going to be a discussion about the broader industry and what are the regulatory challenges and what can the U.S. be doing better, so I’m pretty optimistic,” said Kristin Smith, head of the Blockchain Association.

In his prepared remarks, Allaire calls for Congress to treat digital assets as its own asset class, as current regulatory burdens…