Elizabeth Warren compares cryptocurrency to snake oil

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) compared the current cryptocurrency market to snake oil salesmen in the days before the government began regulating drugs. In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Warren also repeated her call for a wealth tax, saying a small tax on wealth above $50M would pay for programs like universal child care and infrastructure spending. On cryptocurrency, Warren stopped short of including Bitcoin (BTC-USD) in the category of a "snake oil product," but she argued that an unregulated market provided cover for "bad actors." As a result, she called for an enhanced regulatory regime around crypto, saying she didn't want to wait until "a whole lot of people" had been "completely wiped out." "I think rules of the road that are there at the beginning that people say, 'we've got a cop on the beat,' give people a lot of confidence," Warren said.