In an appearance on the Joe Rogan show, Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, warned that the authorities in the US are waging a war against cryptocurrencies and want to control the use of Bitcoin.

In the interview Altman said, “There are many things that I’m disappointed that the US government has done recently, but the war on crypto – which I think is a, like, we can’t give this up, like, we’re going to control this and all that – that’s the thing that makes me quite sad about the country.”

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the world’s largest crypto trading platform, Binance, earlier in the year, alleging the exchange mishandled customer funds, inflated its trading volume artificially, and attempted to evade US regulations. It also charged the biggest trading platform in the United States, Coinbase, with operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.

The moves were a part of a growing push to crack down on the digital asset sector after the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed in 2022. FTX has been alleged to have mishandled and stolen customer funds, using them to cover losses in speculative ventures by the founders, and to have diverted still more customer funds into the pockets of executives as well as to politicians and political causes.

Speaking of the government’s interventions, Altman said, “I’m very worried about how far the surveillance state could go here,” in its attempts to control the use of cryptocurrencies, as he emphasized his opposition to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

US policymakers have expressed an interest in creating a virtual dollar CBDC, however according to Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, that would likely take years to come to fruition.

Regardless, Altman said he was still excited at the prospects offered by Bitcoin, noting that having, “a global currency that is outside of the control of any government is a super logical and important step on the tech tree.”