In a video interview aired on June 14, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler discussed the current market slump, emphasizing the “urgency” of adequately regulating the industry and that “it’s an urgency about investor safety,” as he told the Wall Street Journal at its virtual CFO Network summit.
“Same kind of protections”
For a long time, the SEC has been at the front of crypto skepticism. According to Finbold, its head warned the public in mid-May that some digital asset exchanges may be wagering against their own consumers.
Financial authorities, notably the US Securities and Exchange Commission, are exploiting the scenario to argue that the new asset class needs greater regulation as the cryptocurrency market continues to fall in one of its biggest negative slumps in history (SEC).
Meanwhile, the agency is currently involved in a high-profile action against Ripple, which it claims of sold over $1.3 billion in unregistered XRP currencies between 2013 and December 2020.
According to him, the agency wants to introduce “the same kind of protection” that investors have on the stock market but don’t have in cryptocurrency exchanges and lending – a reference to recent scenarios in which cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius temporarily halted all withdrawals and cryptocurrency exchange Binance did the same.
Gensler also discussed the regulator’s recent actions against the crypto lending platform BlockFi, which it accused of issuing unregistered securities in exchange for users’ crypto deposits while proposing variable interest payments. After agreeing to pay $100 million, the accusations were dropped.
He also indicated that the SEC was in talks with six sites, including crypto exchanges, about registering under its authority. He described it this way:
“On the crypto lending sites, there is a viable road ahead.
” The crypto trading platforms are taking a look at this and asking themselves, “What do we do till those tokens are registered?” We’re working on roughly six initiatives at the moment, attempting to get crypto markets registered.”
Multiple U.S. legislators have questioned the SEC’s crypto attitude, including a letter to the agency in March challenging its information-gathering tactics when it comes to crypto businesses.
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