Nearly four years have passed since FTX — the crypto exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried and headquartered in the Bahamas — filed for bankruptcy. In that time Congress has held hearings, the Justice Department has won a conviction for misappropriating customer funds, and creditors have recovered close to $10 billion.

What Congress hasn’t done is establish safeguards that could have prevented or curtailed the fraud sooner.

Congress has been trying for years. The House twice passed market structure legislation that would have given regulators the authority to stop FTX, most recently in July 2025 by a bipartisan vote of 294 to 134. The Senate Banking Committee and Senate Agriculture Committee cleared their own version of the…