Warren Takes the Chair: Crypto’s “Wild West” Faces a Senate Reckoning

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is preparing an oversight campaign targeting Trump family crypto businesses, Big Tech, Wall Street and large corporations when she becomes chair of the Senate Banking Committee in January, Politico reported Monday. “Big Tech CEOs, Administration officials, Trump family crypto businesses, Wall Street executives, and giant corporations should preserve their documents and prepare to answer tough questions,” a Warren Banking Committee aide told the outlet.

Warren is expected to take over the committee after Democrats won control of the Senate in the midterms, with the panel overseeing banking, housing, cryptocurrency and the Federal Reserve. According to her aide, she wants to end a “Wild West-style lack of oversight” of prediction markets that she says has enabled insider profits, as well as examine potential threats to financial stability, including a potential AI bubble. She also plans to continue working with Republican China hawks to restrict exports of advanced AI chips, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expected to be a major oversight target.

The report came a day after Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been targeted by a Chinese intelligence effort, sending the company’s shares sliding as much as 8%. Nvidia said on Sunday that a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, would examine all available information. “While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” the company said.

Warren is also likely to investigate the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s August decision to grant a conditional bank charter to Trump-backed World Liberty Financial, along with the administration’s firings of financial agency staff and its efforts to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with her thinking. “You’re going to see a lot of investigations,” Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel, told the outlet.

Warren, a persistent critic of the crypto industry and the Trump family’s business interests in it, argued in a Time essay last week that Democrats won by “being populist economic fighters.” She wrote that “Big Tech CEOs, Wall Street executives, and giant corporations should prepare to answer tough questions and face meaningful consequences if they have broken the law.” She has also argued that federal regulators’ approval of national trust charters for crypto firms, including Coinbase and Ripple, is illegal.