The Securities and Exchange Commission showed its grin again. This time the target was Coinbase. An issue for the exchange? Perhaps not, but, nevertheless, this is a sign of SEC behavior bordering on the fantastic, not least because of the huge and obscure attributions, which, let’s remember, also indirectly follow from laws passed back in the 1930s. Laws that might be worth updating, as the SEC has repeatedly stated, but not in the sense that the agency would like.
We will devote a few lines to facts that can be read everywhere, and which in themselves are also out of the ordinary.
According to Bloomberg, the SEC is indeed investigating the activities of Coinbase, one of the most popular and well-known cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. An exchange that, among other things, is listed in the United States, and which represents, if you will, the purest face of the sector. The most institutional and most representative person of the possibility of developing the crypto world within the canons of old finance.
Not for the first time, perhaps not for the last
The reason for the attacks for the SEC will be Coinbase’s listing of unspecified cryptocurrencies, which in reality, according to the law (and according to the SEC’s fantasies), are financial securities. An issue of fundamental importance in the US, because only when an asset is a financial security can the SEC regulate and attack it. In all other cases, regulation will be carried out by other agencies. Therefore, it is for this reason that the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to declare everything possible as financial security.
And it is in this light that we should consider the agency’s latest steps. An agency playing the game on several fronts, the most important of which, of course, is the political front, a front on which the agency headed by Gensler is now experiencing obvious problems with some members of Congress. Just a few days ago, they publicly stated that they were not at all happy with the freedoms that the SEC was taking over, especially with regard to markets over which the SEC was not entrusted. For example, cryptocurrency.
And this may seem like a categorical opinion, but the attitude towards the SEC has become more sour precisely after the legislation proposed in the United States removes it from almost all types of decisions concerning the cryptocurrency market. The market, which today is still worth much less than the stock market, but which, as Gary Gensler knows, is one of the fields on which the most important financial games of the future will be played.
The area is so important that the SEC is obviously not interested in abandoning it, and it fights for it with all its might, which often leads to unwise behavior, and this of course does not contribute to forming a good opinion of the agency’s work.
How much should Coinbase worry about?
Probably less than zero. The company is one of the most transparent cryptocurrencies in the world and has enough tools for self-defense. She was chosen as a scapegoat to assert the power of the SEC, which she exercises, however, with such a level of arbitrariness that it caused some controversy even in Washington.
We are talking about this fratricidal and internecine struggle of American statesmen from time immemorial. Now every detail falls into place. And although we have no intention of saying “we told you so,” we invite everyone to look at this case from this very important angle.