Warren: CFPB Has Power To Stop Crypto Fraud

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) doesn’t have to wait for other agencies’ action to curb cryptocurrency payment abuse, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Thursday (Oct. 28), Bloomberg reported.

Warren said Americans making use of the popular digital coins are more at risk of fraud and other related abuses, including being unable to get their money out of crypto exchanges, according to the report.

“With their intense focus on consumers, the CFPB has a role to play as a cop on the beat,” Warren said in a Bloomberg interview. “Crypto infiltration of the market cuts across different regulatory agency’s jurisdiction. The answer to that is not that each agency should wait for the other to act, it’s that the agencies should all pick up the tools available to them and move.”

Lawmakers of both major U.S. parties have said they’re worried about the possibility of fraud or crime in the popular industry, which is growing quickly, the report stated.

Meanwhile, regulators have signaled that they plan to institute more regulations. Before a Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said he plans to look at how tech giants like Facebook are using cryptocurrencies as part of a larger investigation on how the companies are using data from consumers, according to the report.

Last week, the CFPB announced it plans to send requests for information to big tech companies.

Read more: CFPB Expected to Query Tech Giants Over Financial Data Handling

Chopra said Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google, along with PayPal, Square and other companies, would get 55-page questionnaires about how information is collected, used and stored.

This is part of a larger initiative which will help protect consumers and data, as well as make sure there is competition in consumer financial services.

Chopra has only recently been named director of the watchdog agency. He is a former Democratic commissioner from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a reputation for being tough on tech companies, and he was a part of the CFPB’s creation a decade ago alongside Warren.