House Financial Services Committee Member Maxine Waters Will Object To Crypto Hearing

Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine Waters (D-MO) is slated to object to a joint crypto hearing scheduled for Tuesday, Politico reported on Monday.

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Hosted alongside the House Agriculture panel and titled American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets: A Blueprint for the 21st Century, the hearing is supposed to feature speakers such as Coinbase Product VP Greg Tusar, Former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Benham, and Hiro Systems CEO Alex Miller.

The hearing, which is scheduled to cover regulatory concerns around crypto market structure, requires unanimous consent by all committee members.

However, an anonymous staffer told Politico that Waters plans to walk out with several other Democrats and host a “shadow hearing” regarding U.S. President Donald Trump and his family’s ties to the crypto sector.

The crypto-oriented clash comes the same day that several key Republican lawmakers, including House Financial Service Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR), released an official discussion draft that would establish a sweeping regulatory framework for digital assets in the U.S.

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“We made historic progress in the 118th Congress to build bipartisan, bicameral consensus in crafting a functional regulatory framework for digital assets,” Hill said in a May 5 statement.

“Our discussion draft builds upon that work and provides much-needed regulatory clarity for the digital asset ecosystem by protecting consumers and safeguarding the long-term integrity of digital asset markets in the United States,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been under growing scrutiny for his connections to the world of crypto in recent weeks, particularly amongst his Democratic opponents.

Trump is slated to hold a dinner gala later this month in Washington D.C. for top investors of his namesake meme coin, $TRUMP, sparking concerns over potential ethics violations.

“The American people deserve the unwavering assurance that access to the presidency is not being offered for sale to the highest bidder in exchange for the President’s own financial gain,” Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a letter this month.

It remains to be seen just exactly how Tuesday’s hearing will go down – and which key lawmakers will or will not participate aside from Waters.