Crypto companies are playing poker with the SEC as agency cracks down on the industry
cnbc.comCryptocurrency companies are playing a game of poker with the Securities and Exchange Commission, making bold threats to leave the U.S. as the regulator steps up pressure on the industry to toe the line.
Major players are hoping that the SEC and Washington takes, what crypto watchers see as bluffs, seriously and soften the hard line that regulators have taken on the industry.
Executives at firms including crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain services company Ripple have piled on with comments laying into the SEC and signaling plans to shift business overseas, in a bid to rally support and send a message to U.S. politicians concerned that the country may miss out on a key technological innovation.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said last week that the SEC was on a «lone crusade» with its tough actions against certain crypto companies. He added that Chair Gary Gensler had taken an «anti-crypto view,» despite earlier being a supporter of the industry during his time as an economics professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
«The SEC is a bit of an outlier here,» Armstrong told CNBC's Dan Murphy in an interview in Dubai. «I don't think [Gensler is] necessarily trying to regulate the industry as much as maybe curtail it. But he's created some lawsuits, and I think it's quite unhelpful for the industry in the U.S. writ large.»
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, also tore into the SEC this week. When asked for his message to Gensler as the company announced an expansion into Dubai, he quipped, «Who?» before later saying Ripple will have spent $200 million defending itself against a lawsuit initiated by the regulator by the time it is over.
«I find it as a company that started in the United States and as somebody who is a
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