The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler has suggested that crypto exchanges and lending platforms should voluntarily work with the agency under existing securities laws.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Gensler stated that he and the SEC were attempting “to pursue investor protection,” explaining that “if that means bringing greater enforcement actions we’ll do that.” But, he continued, there could be room for some form of self-regulation or voluntary moves from exchanges to approach the SEC to express their willingness to comply.
Gensler said:
“It would be better to have these platforms come and work with us and come under the securities laws.”
The laws in question were created in the early 1930s, and many crypto community members in the United States have claimed these are a poor fit for crypto and cutting-edge modern technological advances.
But Gensler dismissed the need for regulatory change, stating:
“I think the laws are pretty clear, [as they were] laid out in the 1930s. And we have an ability to work with these exchanges using various authorities to basically tailor some of these.”
He added that “crypto exchanges and lending platforms have operated differently than the traditional New York Stock Exchange.”
Gensler once again underlined the SEC’s stance on crypto, claiming that “many of [the] tokens” traded on exchanges “have the attributes of securities.”
He said:
“They’re raising money from the public and the public is anticipating profits based upon the efforts of others. […] It comes down to this: Are you raising money from the public and the public’s anticipating profits based on the efforts of others?”
However, he conceded that some coins may qualify as “commodity tokens,” although he suggested that those that classify as commodities would not remain totally out of the SEC’s remit.
“We’re going to work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission where there are some [coins] that are commodity tokens. Because while many of these are securities some may be under their remit and we work together as two federal agencies,” he said.
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