The first time a politician referred to Bitcoin as impossible to kill

On July 17, 2019, during a period of intense scrutiny and debate over the future of cryptocurrencies, U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry made a statement that would resonate with the crypto community and become a defining moment in the discourse surrounding Bitcoin’s resilience. In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, McHenry, who was serving as the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, declared, "There is no capacity to kill Bitcoin."
 

This bold assertion came amidst congressional hearings on the then-proposed Libra cryptocurrency by Facebook, which had sparked widespread regulatory concerns. McHenry’s words were a stark contrast to the skepticism and apprehension expressed by many of his peers in Congress. His statement underscored a fundamental belief in the robustness of Bitcoin’s decentralized nature and its ability to withstand regulatory pressures.
 

McHenry went on to explain that while new iterations of cryptocurrencies that mimic Bitcoin but are not fully open or decentralized could be shut down, Bitcoin itself, being a true open distributed ledger, was beyond the reach of regulators’ ability to extinguish. He differentiated between commodities and securities, suggesting that their regulatory treatment would vary depending on how they were traded and utilized.