U.S. Senate to hold FTX hearing on Dec. 1, CFTC chairman to testify

The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday said it will hold a hearing on Dec. 1 to examine the sudden collapse of FTX, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges.

FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, leaving an estimated 1 million customers and other investors facing billions of dollars in total losses. The firm’s failure has created a liquidity crunch that has rippled across the industry and sent the prices of bitcoin and other digital assets plummeting.

Rostin Behnam, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is the first witness named for the hearing, titled, “Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse.”

U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow also on Thursday called on Congress to pass the bipartisan Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, which she said, “would have prohibited the misconduct and risky behavior undertaken by FTX.”

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee has also said it plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate FTX’s collapse.