3 Democrats Demand Trump Admin To Stop Any Cryptocurrency Initiatives In HUD
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April 3, 2025 4:00 pm
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Three Democratic U.S. lawmakers are calling for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to halt all cryptocurrency initiatives.
Democrat lawmakers Maxine Waters, Stephen Lynch, and Emanuel Cleaver sent a letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner to halt all cryptocurrency and blockchain experiments in HUD.
The lawmakers wrote, “The federal government cannot allow under-regulated financial products to infiltrate critical housing programs, especially when they have already proven to be dangerous, speculative, and harmful to working families.”
The letter comes after HUD officials raised the idea of using stablecoins in the agency’s work.
Representatives Demand Housing Agency Halt Any Cryptocurrency Experiments
Three Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee have warned HUD against using crypto, which they said could be “dangerous, speculative, and harmful to working families.”https://t.co/ZYX4kzLi3B
— Justin Parmenter (@JustinParmenter) April 3, 2025
Per Pro Publica:
Three federal lawmakers are calling on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to stop any initiatives involving cryptocurrency and the blockchain, saying the scantly regulated technologies should be kept far away from the agency’s work overseeing the nation’s housing sector.
In a letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner on Wednesday, Reps. Maxine Waters, Stephen Lynch and Emanuel Cleaver sharply criticized the agency for considering such experiments, given cryptocurrency’s volatility and vulnerability to fraud. The Democratic representatives, all members of the House Financial Services Committee, warned of repeating “the same mistakes of the past,” noting that the 2008 financial crisis was triggered in part by the proliferation of risky financial assets in the housing market.
“The federal government cannot allow under-regulated financial products to infiltrate critical housing programs, especially when they have already proven to be dangerous, speculative, and harmful to working families,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter is a response to reporting by ProPublica that the housing agency recently discussed taking steps toward using cryptocurrency. The article described meetings in February in which officials discussed incorporating the blockchain — and possibly a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoin — into the agency’s work. The discussion at one meeting centered on a pilot project involving one HUD grant, but a HUD finance official in attendance indicated the idea could be applied much more expansively across the agency.
“We are looking at this for the entire enterprise,” he said in that meeting, a recording of which was obtained by ProPublica. “We just wanted to start in CPD,” he added, referring to HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development. The office administers billions of dollars in grants to support low- and moderate-income people, including funding for affordable housing, homeless shelters and disaster recovery, raising the prospect that these forms of aid might one day be paid in an unstable currency.
Three federal lawmakers are calling on HUD to stop any initiatives involving cryptocurrency and the blockchain, saying the scantly regulated technologies should be kept far away from the agency’s work overseeing the nation’s housing sector.https://t.co/3k1RvKL0UZ
— ProPublica (@propublica) April 3, 2025
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