The chairman of the SEC responded to questions from the US Congress on Tuesday. Gary Gensler endured blatant hostility from US officials for three hours.
Coinbase vs. SEC
G. Gensler’s testimony came hours after the CEO of Coinbase threatened to pull the plug in the face of lack of clarity from regulators.
Brian Armstrong launched from London that he was considering “move its headquarters if the United States does not take steps to change its approach to crypto regulation”.
Building on the Coinbase CEO’s protrusion, reps accused G. Gensler of scaring innovation away from the United States.
Funny when you know that the US Congress pressured the SEC not to investigate FTX. And that the CEO of this exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, has led an influence campaign to facilitate access to the US market for exchanges stashed in tax havens.
Would the tens of millions distributed by Sam Bankman-Fried to the Democrats continue to have an effect?
“All of these companies should comply with the law, and until they do, we will continue to prosecute them, investigate and follow the facts and the law”defended Gensler.
“Regulation by prosecution is neither sufficient nor sustainable”retorted the chairman of the commission McHenry. “You are punishing companies for not allegedly adhering to the law when they don’t know it applies to them. »
Gensler, however, dismissed the idea that exchanges don’t know how to interpret US securities laws.
The real fault of G. Gensler
Ultimately, Gary Gensler is guilty of wanting to protect investors from thousands of ever-renewed shitcoins. So many pastiches that enrich a handful of influencers and professional scammers.
Quite the opposite of Bitcoin:
Ultimately, these attacks against G. Gensler are engineered by the exchanges and the Ethereum lobby. McHenry also insisted that the chairman of the SEC clearly state whether Ethereum is a security:
“In 2018, then SEC Chief Financial Officer Bill Hinman said ether was not a security. Last month, the chairman of the CFTC [Rostin] Behnam expressed his view that ether is a commodity. On the other hand, last month, the attorney general of the State of New York specified in a legal request that ether was a security. It is clear that an asset cannot be both a commodity and a security. Do you agree ? »
“It depends on the facts and the law”repeated Mr. Gensler several times, refusing to say yes or no.
[Commodity = matière première comme l’or, le blé, le fer, le pétrole. Security = titre financier comme un bon du trésor ou une action Apple.]
The SEC’s strategy seems to be to leave the threat of litigation hanging. The goal is probably to force Coinbase, the Ethereum foundation (founded by Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, etc) and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (founded by dozens of multinationals including JP Morgan) to come and register themselves.
That said, everyone knows that the SEC considers Ethereum to be a security. This is all the more true since Ethereum went into Proof-of-Stake and was 70% pre-mined…
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