'Tough Questions' Ahead: Warren Targets Prediction Markets, Trump Crypto as Banking Chair

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), one of the crypto industry's most prominent critics, is preparing to use the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee to launch an oversight campaign aimed at Trump family crypto businesses, Big Tech and Wall Street, Politico reported on 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 in January after Democrats won control of the Senate in last week's midterm elections. The panel oversees banking, housing, cryptocurrency and the Federal Reserve, and its chair has broad powers to call hearings and launch investigations.

According to the aide, Warren also wants to end a "Wild West-style lack of oversight" of prediction markets that she says has allowed insiders to profit, and plans to warn about threats to financial stability, including a potential AI bubble.

She intends to keep working with Republican China hawks to restrict exports of advanced AI chips, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected to be a top oversight target, Politico reported. The report came a day after Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been the target of a Chinese intelligence effort, and as Nvidia shares slid as much as 8%, wiping roughly $350 billion off the company's value.

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, as well as 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.

In an essay for Time last week, Warren argued that Democrats won by "being populist economic fighters," and said "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."

Warren and crypto

Warren has been a persistent critic of the crypto industry and of the Trump family's business interests in it. She has argued that federal regulators' approval of national trust charters for crypto firms, including Coinbase and Ripple, is illegal, and has said the CFTC has been "steamrolled" by the prediction market and crypto firms it oversees.

She has also questioned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over a Tether loan to a trust tied to his children, and joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in urging the Labor Department to drop plans that would make it easier to hold crypto in 401(k) retirement plans.

Warren was one of the leading opponents of the Clarity Act, the crypto industry's top legislative priority, which stalled in the Senate this year. Democrats are now planning to push a broader crypto market structure bill when they take control of Congress.

The White House has pushed back. A spokesperson told Reuters that Trump is willing to work with anyone on behalf of Americans, but that "sham investigations and radical left policies" would undermine any such effort.

Republicans have cast Warren as the main obstacle to crypto legislation. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the current Banking chair, has argued that without market structure rules, crypto is left in "the wild, wild West."

Warren's ability to pass legislation will be limited while Trump remains in the White House. In her Time essay, she acknowledged that Trump has embraced the nickname "Mr. Veto," but argued that Democrats should send him bills anyway.