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Nov. 16 (UPI) -- The House Financial Services Committee announced Wednesday it plans to hold hearings in December to investigate the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Group. The Committee expects to call the company's former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, as well as a host of other witnesses, its chairwoman Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said in a statement Wednesday.
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"The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over one million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds," Waters said in the statement.
"Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year. That's why it is with great urgency that I, along with my colleague Ranking Member [Patrick] McHenry, announce the Committee's intention to hold a hearing to investigate the collapse of FTX."
The collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange was sudden and made national headlines. FTX Group and its 130 affiliated companies, tweeted Friday that it has commenced voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
The day before, FTX reopened withdrawals after they had been stopped for two days. It then said that "trading may be halted on FTX U.S. in a few days." Earlier this year, FTX had been valued at $32 billion.
Bankman-Fried has since resigned and retreated from the public eye. The 30-year-old routinely sought the limelight, becoming one of the Democratic Party's top donors.
"As Chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, I have led the effort in examining and investigating the digital assets marketplace, and know that we need legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight and clear rules of the road," Waters said Wednesday.
"I look forward to holding this important hearing, and uncovering all that Congress must do to ensure this never happens again."
McHenry, R-N.C., said he appreciated Waters' bipartisan approach to delivering accountability.
On Saturday, Bankman-Fried posted a message saying he was in the Bahamas. However, Flightradar24, a flight tracker that tracks planes all over the world in real-time tracked his plane to Argentina.
The flight to Buenos Aires became the most-tracked flight in the app's history, following the Gulfstream G450 private jet from the Bahamas to Argentina. It surpassed the August record set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's flight to Taiwan in August.
The company said Friday that Bankman-Fried and "many employees" of the FTX Group in various countries are expected to continue with the company to assist operations during the bankruptcy.
