Lenders. I think thats something that id like to talk a little bit about here today because members of our military have to resort to financing from these predatory lenders all too often. We know military Service Members are three times more likely than civilians to use predatory payday loans that charge exorbitant rates. Thats three times the civilians use. The military families carry 10,000 or more in Credit Card Debt compared to 16 for civilian frames. 10 of military families carry more than 20,000 in debt compared to just 7 of the civilian families, and more than half of military Service Members are not saving for the future and have trouble paying their monthly bills. Thats why this morning, i reintroduced my military savings act which is legislation i previously introduced in the house of representatives, and the bill would promote Savings Rates among military Service Members and decrease their need to turn to predatory payday lenders in times of financial crisis. The bill establ
Terms of youre not truly anonymous. There is an encrypted version of who owns what. So one concern about the, if you will, the reliability of the currency is whether that encryption can actually be broken. So i want to ask that question. There are some very powerful code breakers in the world. And we certainly have cussio discussions about our own u. S. Capability to break codes quite often up here. But the second is weve had this series of reported crimes. One was a Bitcoin Savings and trust which ran a pyramid scheme in bitcoins. We also had the hacking of a Bitcoin Exchange called bit floor. And as it was reported, 24,000 bitcoins were stolen. 2 and we had instawallet, a wallet provider that was hacked and ed. They lost 35,000 bitcoins. These are not small dollar items given the value of the individual coins. But maybe to paint a little bit of a picture for us, how does this all work . If there is a public ledger that is keeping track of who owns what, then how does one actually ste
Submit. My name is david cotney and i serves t as the commissioner of banks for the commonwealth of massachusetts. It is my pleasure to testify before you today on behalf behalf of the conference of ou state supervisor. Hold i thank you forin holding this n hearing today to address the risks and benefits of Virtual Currency. Theri risks of Virtual Currency include Consumer Protection, Payment Systems, national ity, m security, Money Laundering, and other illicit activities. The potential benefits are also differ. Fits are speed and efficiency, lower transaction costs, and providin an outlet for the unbanked and underbanked. With these evolving Payment Technologies states are exploring the connection between existing money transmitter regulation and Virtual Currencies. State regulators have long supervised money transmitters to protect consumers and preserve National Security and lawnete enforcement interests. State regulators are talking with industry and other regulators about evolvin