Blaine Luetkemeyer, a House representative from Missouri, revisited the issue of major companies exerting control over vast swaths of the internet, something he expressed concerns about encroaching in the crypto space.

Speaking at a Wednesday hearing on digital assets with The House Committee on Financial Services, Luetkemeyer addressed Bitfury CEO and former acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks in saying that major tech firms including Instagram, Facebook — now Meta — and Twitter “control people on their platforms.” Luetkemeyer asked whether this level of control could extend to undue influence for the rollout of a digital dollar.

“The point of crypto is to have true decentralization,” said Brooks. “The projects that succeed will be the projects that achieve that. Bitcoin succeeded because there were literally millions of participants in the node network, and so there is no CEO of Twitter to deplatform you, there’s no CEO of JPMorgan to take away your credit card.”

The Bitfury CEO added that he believed companies unable to meet this standard would be relegated to the “ash heap of history” — that is, lose their relevance and largely be forgotten. In his written statement to the committee, Brooks implied that a decentralized internet would be better “than an Internet largely controlled by five big companies”:

“Crypto policy should take into account not only any new risks introduced into the system, but also the risks in the present system that are…