In early December, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres stood at a lectern embossed with the congressional seal in his district office in the Bronx, staring with his head cocked at a line of local news cameras.
The cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its wunderkind founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a darling in Washington, had collapsed a few weeks earlier. Torres was far from Bankman-Fried’s immediate orbit, but he was not free from association, either. Since being sworn in to his seat from New York’s 15th Congressional District in January 2021 as a Democrat, Torres had allied with a bipartisan group of crypto-curious politicians. Representing one of the poorest congressional districts, Torres argued for crypto’s potential to help low-income people build wealth and disrupt the unjust power dynamics of finance.
