Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following opening statement during a Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Inclusion Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Decoding DeFi: Breaking Down the Future for Decentralized Finance.”

While decentralized finance, or DeFi aims to create greater efficiencies and transparency, it can also pose a heightened risk of hacks, scams, unequal information, and conflicts of interest that can harm consumers and investors.

We have seen this play out in the new DeFi venture that Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. plan to launch, called World Liberty Financial. Because of the prominence of those behind the project, bad actors took advantage of the opportunity to scam potential users. Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump’s X accounts were hacked, and scammers used them to announce links to a coin, falsely claiming to represent World Liberty Financial. According to the analysis, at least 200,000 people viewed the posts, and approximately 2,000 people purchased $1.8 million worth of the fake token. Lawmakers have a responsibility here to consider strong protections to prevent such scams moving forward.

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