Gary Gensler is hurting the little guys for Wall Street
Even the most stalwart crypto supporters could see why the Securities and Exchange Commission might target the crypto industry for some enforcement. Events of the past year — from the failure of Three Arrows Capital to the fraud at FTX — were bound to bring some scrutiny, and the industry has always been too hospitable to blatant hucksters.
But the recent spate of enforcement actions by the SEC and U.S. agencies do not meet the standard of protection. Instead, a close review of everything from the banking crackdown earlier this year to the endless regulation by enforcement strikes a different chord. It seems as if the U.S. government is taking action to protect the financial services industry from disruption.
Exhibit A of this phenomenon is the SEC’s mammoth suit against Coinbase — a company long perceived to be one of the “good guys” in crypto. Its client list includes large asset managers, Fortune 100 companies and the U.S. government itself, none of which have ever complained about the integrity of its services. Unlike FTX, Coinbase has never defrauded its customers. It didn’t base itself in an offshore tax haven and has never been hacked. In fact, the company has repeatedly stated its intent to be regulated and has gone as far as suing the SEC to force it to provide a roadmap on how.
Related: Crypto enthusiasts are wrong to target Gary Gensler
Its reward? A 100-page suit full of contradictions, like some layer-1 tokens being securities and others not. Imagine a town that refuses to tell you what the speed limit is but frequently gives speeding tickets. Nobody would take such a place seriously. We still don’t know whether Ether (ETH) is a security, despite SEC Chair Gary Gensler telling us repeatedly that his
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