Three more governors are joining the growing number of states banning employees from using TikTok on state-owned devices.

In separate orders announced Tuesday and Wednesday, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey all prohibited state employees from using the Chinese-owned social media app on devices owned by the state. The three states are the latest to ban the app, following similar moves already made by a half-dozen other states, and bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok in Congress.

“It is clear that TikTok represents a national security risk to our country and I refuse to subject the citizens of Iowa to that risk,” Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday. “They trust us with their personal and confidential information and we will take every step possible to protect it, including from the Chinese government. The safety of Iowans is my number one priority and that includes their cybersecurity.” Reynolds’s order prohibits state agencies from owning or subscribing to a TikTok account and bans the app on state-owned devices.

In a memo to all state agency heads in Alabama, Ivey announced that she had ordered the Secretary of Information Technology to prohibit the app from accessing the state’s IT network and devices, with some exceptions for law enforcement and other critical functions. She also called for state agencies to take steps to prevent TikTok from accessing sensitive state data. “Protecting Alabama’s IT infrastructure from cyber threats is vital to ensuring the safety and success of our State,” Ivey wrote in the memo.

“The computer devices and networks used by our state government house significant amounts significant amounts of Alabamians’ sensitive data. They also ensure the proper functioning of numerous automated government functions.” Ivey pointed to recent reports from national security officials warning about the excessive amounts and types of data the app asks permission to take from a user’s device, as well as parent company ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Burgum’s Executive Order went a step further than either Reynolds’s or Ivey’s; in addition to blocking the application from state devices, North Dakota state employees are prohibited from even visiting the TikTok website on state devices. Burgum also announced that his state agencies would be implementing controls to prevent state employees from using the platform. The order also voiced similar concerns about reports from the FBI about the company’s ties to the CCP. It also made mention of federal government efforts to ban the platform.

More than a half-dozen states have already banned state employees from using the Chinese-owned platform from state-owned devices. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts was the first to ban the app on state devices, back in August 2020. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem blocked the app in November of this year. The move set off a chain reaction from other Republican governors; the Republican governors of South Carolina, Maryland, Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma have since banned the app from state devices.

A bipartisan effort to ban the app is also underway in Congress. On Tuesday, Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio announced legislation to ban TikTok in the U.S. Republican Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher and Democratic Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi unveiled the same bill in the House.

“Gotham” actor Ben McKenzie made it clear on Tuesday that he was not interested in joining the cryptocurrency revolution, calling the digital currency industry “the largest Ponzi scheme in history.”

McKenzie shared his pre-written testimony via Twitter on Tuesday ahead of his Wednesday appearance before the Senate Banking Committee — and he explained that even though he holds a degree in economics, he still found himself at a loss to understand how the cryptocurrency market was not by definition susceptible to fraud on a massive scale.

My written testimony for the @SenateBanking hearing tomorrow https://t.co/dQf36LSHJ4

— Ben McKenzie (@ben_mckenzie) December 13, 2022

McKenzie explained in his testimony that he could certainly understand why people might not necessarily trust banks and how attractive it might be to have an alternative — but that the alternative presented by cryptocurrency was to move trust from banks to technology.

“You cannot create ‘trustless’ money because money is trust. We made it up; it’s a social construct. Like all social constructs, money relies on trust forged through social consensus. You can no more create a ‘trustless’ money than you can a governmentless government or a religionless religion. The applicable words are anarchy and cult,” McKenzie stated.

“What ‘trustless’ means in practice in crypto is placing your trust in the people who run the exchanges, or issue the coins, or anyone else who takes your real money in exchange for lines of computer code stored on ledgers called blockchains,” he continued. “Code does not fall from the sky; people write it. I believe few of the people in the cryptocurrency industry have earned the trust of the public.”

McKenzie went on to argue that the proposed decentralized structure of cryptocurrency — and the proud insistence of many advocates that losing money in crypto stemmed from investors’ failure to do their own research — actually opened the door for more potential fraud rather than less.

He explained that the industry had essentially created a parallel universe within the world of finance, but that universe had intentionally been built without a lot of the safeguards and regulations that existed in the traditional banking system — and it gave the people working behind the curtain no real reason to behave in an honest or ethical way.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he warned. “The simple truth is that in an unregulated market, at every juncture where value is transferred from one party to another, not only is there nothing preventing one or more parties from committing fraud, there is often very little even disincentivizing them from doing so. If you can rip people off and get away with it, why not do it?”

Comparing the structure of cryptocurrency marketing to that which might be seen as part of a pyramid scheme, McKenzie added, “I submit to you today that the entire cryptocurrency industry resembles nothing more than a massive speculative bubble built on a foundation of fraud. In my opinion, it is the largest Ponzi scheme in history by an order of magnitude.”