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.
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.
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.
When Congress talks about the Earth-shaking cryptography, regulators are already in work. Federal agencies aren’t waiting to get busy with Congressional and crypto policymaking, Jesse Hamilton noted in this predictive analysis ahead of the SEC’s POW mining statement and the update of OCC’s common risks.
Crypto-mining for workplace certifications does not cause securities laws, the SEC said:
US banking institutions reduce “reputation risk” from exams after the crypto sector cites the issue. The position of the currency secretary told the National Bank on Thursday that he removed “reputation risks” from the supervision handbook.
XRP zooms 10% like Garlinghouse says the SEC is filing a lawsuit against Ripple. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the SEC has agreed to remove the appeal of its July 2023 ruling.
Digital Chamber wins a new chief as Crypto Lobyist holds a friendly Washington. Cody Carbon, the president of the lobby organization, will take over as CEO.
Crypto Exchange Bithumb assaulted by South Korean prosecutors on embezzlement claims: Report: South Korean prosecutors have launched an investigation into the crypto exchange Bithumb and have considered the embezzlement claims.
Plans to control Solana Defi Trading in Inside Pump.Fun: Pump.Fun is launching a token swap service to obtain slices of fees generated by Solana’s automatic market makers.
Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin admits to committing a crime in Wire fraud, market manipulation. In 2019, Coindesk filed a complaint to Coindesk that he actually requested laundry and sales operations, saying that it seemed to have greater liquidity and market capitalization in practice.
NASDAQ will move partially to stock stock trading for encryption, exchange executives say: both NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange are working on trading at least 24 hours a day.
SEC Chairperson Paul Atkins stands up to Senate Committee next week: SEC Chairperson Paul Atkins and Secretary nominee Jonathan Gould face the Senate Banking Committee for a confirmation hearing next week.
The US government will remove cash sanctions for tornadoes. Months after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Finance Department’s Foreign Assets Control Bureau could not sanction smart contracts, OFAC removed sanctions on crypto mixers’ tornado cash.
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
14:40 UTC (10:40am ET) US President Donald Trump spoke to audiences at the Digital Assets Summit, which has been heavily repeated and repeated comments he made at the White House Script Summit on March 7th.
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 bird flu strain – this time, H7N9 – was attacked by the US for the first time since 2017. This is above the ongoing H5N1 outbreak.
(CNN) Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said he will step down from leading the semi-public transit company at White House’s direction.
(Bloomberg) Coinbase is in high-level talks to acquire derivatives platform Deribit, Bloomberg reported that the exchange was interested in the company following Coindsk’s report last month.
(Wired) The former META employee wrote a Tell-All book about her experiences at the company. Meta is all out to limit its distribution. Careless People have since risen to become a bestseller on Amazon.
(Bloomberg) Bloomberg profiled the role of New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in promoting cryptography in the Senate.
The Trump administration’s plan for (Politico) USAID includes reforming it and “levelag blockchain technology to protect transactions,” but the document obtained by this document does not include any further details. “All distributions are also protected and tracked through blockchain technology, which will fundamentally improve security, transparency and traceability,” the document says. If you’re one of the individuals looking for blockchain integration with the US government, chat.
(Participant) The Trump administration staged more than 200 men from Venezuela at a prison in El Salvador, allowing them to violate court orders 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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