SEC announces 'crusade' against cryptocurrency exchanges
Cryptocurrency exchanges are selling what we consider to be securities, and we intend to fight it, the head of the SEC said, speaking Tuesday at a meeting of the banking committee of the Senate, the upper house of the U.S. parliament, forklog writes.
"There are tens or hundreds of tokens on many platforms, and many of them are securities that must be registered with the Commission unless they qualify for an exemption," Gensler noted. A "very small" number of cryptocurrencies do qualify as exchange-traded products, he said.
During the speech, Gensler also touched on the topic of consumer protection.
"Currently, we simply don't have enough investor protection in crypto-financing, issuing, trading or lending. It's more like the Wild West. This asset class is rife with fraud and abuse," the SEC chief explained.
"The collapse of the cryptocurrency market last week and the resulting disruption to exchanges serves as a clear demonstration of the need for the SEC to regulate the industry," said Senator Elizabeth Warren.
She gave the example of a hypothetical retail investor who lost all his money by investing just before the collapse. If such an investor tried to retrieve their investment, they would find that cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, were unavailable.
"The regulator will avoid 'warning shots' and 'clarifications'. The gloves have been dropped, now it's combat gloves," was how lawyer Jeremy Hogan characterized the Commission Chairman's speech.
Recall that in May, Gensler called on Congress to bring clarity to the crypto industry's regulatory framework. In August, he warned of increased regulation and DeFi. In September, the top management of Coinbase disclosed information about disagreements with the SEC regarding the announced crypto-savings accounts based on the USDC stablecoin.