Two lawsuits were filed this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States might determine the future of Bitcoin.
The first complaint, filed by US SEC on June 5, targeted Binance.com, the world's largest crypto exchange, affiliated firms, and founder Changpeng Zhao. The US SEC filed 130 Lawsuits and its second claim the next day, on the regulator's 89th birthday, this time against Coinbase, another huge exchange.
"There is nothing about the crypto securities markets that suggests that investors and issuers are less deserving of the protections afforded by our securities laws," SEC head Gary Gensler stated a few days later, on Thursday.
He went on to say that while crypto exchanges and promoters have long been aware of the rules of the road for trading in cryptos—via SEC orders and enforcement actions—they have chosen to ignore or dismiss them because they "may have made a calculated economic decision to accept the risk of enforcement as the cost of doing business."
"You simply can't ignore the rules because you don't like them or because you'd prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great," Gurbir S. Grewal, head of the SEC's enforcement division, said in response to the complaint against Coinbase.
Starting with nothing in 2009-10, crypto is today believed to be a US$1 trillion economy, primarily operating in regulatory limbo.
Crypto exchanges have argued that their offerings—tokens—are not like securities and, as a result, their exchanges are not subject to ordinary restrictions.
The US regulator is not convinced. And, under the leadership of Gensler, who was nominated by US President Joe Biden in 2021, it has moved to impose its control over crypto exchanges, claiming that its offerings—tokens—are securities and must be registered with the regulator in the same way that others and their exchanges must.
It has filed over 130 crypto cases thus far, pushing smaller enterprises to close and others who can afford the high expense of litigation to settle.
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