The Securities and Exchange Commission aims to reset its relationship with the crypto industry, even before the permanent chair is confirmed by Congress. The latest initiative, held at the SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, at the roundtable Friday, features dozens of lawyers representing a range of views and positions within the crypto industry.
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The SEC reset began when Chairman Mark Weda launched a cryptographic task force, withdrawing his agency, withdrawing staff accounting notice 121, removing ongoing lawsuits several times, and publishing multiple staff statements about how they view members and workplace mining.
Why is it important?
The SEC is perhaps the most important federal regulator in cryptography at this time. Its sister agency, Commodity Futures Trade Commission, may be a regulator that may one day oversee the crypto spot market, but now it’s the SEC who wants guidance on what most companies in the sector can do exactly.
I’ll break it
The roundtable was split into two parts (if you would count introductory remarks from three, three commissioners): a 90-minute moderated panel discussion led by former SEC commissioner and Paredes Strategies founder Troy Paredes, and a 90-minute town hall still measured by Paredes.
You can read the Coindesk report on the panel discussion at this link.
The central question under discussion has been for many years how crypto or crypto transactions do exactly and exactly how they are security, but panelists touched on everything from the role of crypto in increasing ransomware to how businesses should operate.
Chris Brummer, CEO and professor at Georgetown Law, opened the discussion with an analysis of what Howey Test really means. Essentially, when you have savings, you say there is an issue with investor protection. General corporate prongs, which we all know well, are working on issues that actually provide the problem. ”
“It really becomes information asymmetric and the profit issues go to the kind of investor psychology, greed, fear, the kind of thing that can distort decisions,” he said. “And basically, if all these factors come together, there are mandatory disclosures (rules).”
The SEC approach up until now has limited many cryptographic projects, said Sarah Brennan, legal counsel at Delphi Ventures. While many cryptographic projects aim to have a wide initial distribution, the “ghost of securities law application” means that many projects act in a way that exposes the cryptographic aspects of the project rather than actually accept them.
“We increasingly think of tokens as products. There are a variety of ways people artificially support prices and I think they are generally toxic to the market,” she said.
Former SEC attorney John Reed Stark said the “economic reality of the transaction” is important.
“But you want to see it, but the people who buy the code are not collectors,” he said. “We all know that they are investors and that the SEC’s mission is to protect investors.”
It is still unclear how the SEC efforts will continue, but agents are playing a more active role in publicly engaging in these questions, and the industry appears to be responding. The SEC Auditorium was sometimes full of about three-quarters, not to mention people who were in line with the live stream.
Just as Congress speaks of the Earth-shaking cryptography, regulators are already in work. Federal agencies are not waiting for Congress or permanent heads to get busy with crypto policymaking, Jesse Hamilton noted in this predictive analysis ahead of the SEC POW mining statement and the update of OCC’s common risks. It is outside the SEC’s jurisdiction, the agency said in a staff statement. The AUS banking institution reduced the “reputation risk” from the exam after the crypto sector cited the issue. The appeal of the July 2023 ruling that Ripple did not violate federal securities laws when selling XRP to retail investors by making it available through exchanges, and the case itself is nearing the end. Cody Carbon, the president of the lobby organization, takes over Bithumb, which South Korean prosecutors embezzle and attack, as CEO. Report: Report: South Korean prosecutors have begun an investigation into the crypto exchange Bithumb. Slices of fees generated by the automated market maker of Solana.Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin pleaded guilty to fraud, market manipulation. Pleas for plea bargains. Nasdaq will move to partially 24-hour stock trading for encryption, and Exchange Executive: NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange are working on trading at least round-round. Chairperson Paul Atkins and Secretary candidate Jonathan Gould will face the Senate Banking Committee for a confirmation hearing next week.
Tuesday
15:30 UTC (ET 11:30 AM ET) A federal judge who oversaw the US Department of Justice lawsuit against the founder of Samourai Wallet held a status conference hearing in the case. According to a colleague Cheyenne Ligon who attended, the long seven-minute hearing addressed several procedural issues but did not dig into the details of the incident.
Thursday
Friday
17:00 UTC (1:00 PM ET) The Securities and Exchange Commission held a roundtable event with legal experts from the crypto industry and SEC staff. (Reuters) Another strain of bird flu – this time it hit the US for the first time since 2017. A semi-public transit company as directed by the White House. (Bloomberg) Coinbase is undergoing high consultations to acquire derivatives platform Delibit, Bloomberg, following a report from Coindesk last month, told a former Meta employee spoke about the company’s experience and about Meta limiting everything. Careless people have risen to become Amazon’s bestsellers. Bloomberg profiled the role of New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in promoting cryptography in the Senate. “All distributions are also protected and tracked through blockchain technology, which will fundamentally improve security, transparency and traceability,” the document says. If you are one of the individuals driving blockchain integration with the US government, let’s chat. (Guardian) The Trump administration has directed more than 200 men from Venezuela to prisons in El Salvador, violating court orders and without hearing or trial. In an official statement, the administration said all 238 people were linked to the Tren de Aragua gang, but that had taken instructions from the Venezuelan government, officials said in court documents that many of the people who flew to El Salvador had no criminal history. Many families of these individuals say they were not criminals and had no gang bonds. Some individuals reportedly signed deportations and are expected to return to Venezuela. The US intelligence agency also appears to have seen the TDA not linked to the Venezuelan government, the Times reported.
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