Meet Washington's 'Crypto Queen,' Sen. Cynthia Lummis

Senator Cynthia Lummis is known as the "Crypto Queen" on Capitol Hill. The Wyoming Republican has established a reputation in Congress as a cryptocurrency educator, demystifying and advocating for the technology among her senior colleagues.

She calls herself a HODLer, which is crypto-speak for someone who invests in bitcoin in order to get in before it takes over larger swaths of the financial system. In June, she and Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced legislation to establish some of the first federal safeguards for the expanding and largely unregulated world of decentralised finance.

"There are groups who want no regulation. There are other groups that want to completely ban digital assets," a spokesperson for Sen. Lummis told Insider. "We need to meet somewhere in the middle to make sure that bad actors are not taking advantage of the lack of regulatory clarity, but also that innovators can continue to develop new technologies that make our world better."

Sen. Lummis served as Wyoming's state treasurer from 1999 to 2007, before being elected to the US House of Representatives. After former President Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, she served as vice-chair of his presidential transition team.