Gary's Crypto Testimony: This is WHAT COMES NEXT!!
👨🏫SEC Recap👨🏫
The Securities And Exchange Commission or SEC is a financial regulator in the United States that seeks to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. The SEC does this by setting and enforcing regulations around securities. Securities include assets like as stocks, government and corporate bonds, and even some cryptocurrencies. The problem is that the SEC’s classification of what counts as a security when it comes to cryptocurrencies has not been entirely clear.
👨💼Gary Gensler Hearing👨💼
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently testified at an annual hearing with politicians and discussed various topics. Though not mentioned in the oral version of his opening statement, Gary details the areas of cryptocurrency that concern the SEC in the written version which can be found on the SEC’s website. These are ICOs, crypto trading, lending, and borrowing, stablecoins, stocks that offer exposure to cryptos, and cryptocurrency custody.
💲SPACs And Stablecoins💲
The reason why this is relevant to crypto is because Circle, the company that issues USDC, announced back in July that they’re planning to go public via SPAC. Any serious action by the SEC against the current SPAC set up could jeopardize Circle’s stock listing. When pressed by Senator Toomey, Gary was unable to explain why stablecoins could be classified as securities despite not meeting the expectation of profit criteria found in the Howey Test.
⚖Crypto Compliance⚖
Gary started off by saying that crypto projects should come and talk to the SEC if they’re concerned about their regulatory status. Then, Gary casually acknowledged the fact that existing regulations don’t quite work for crypto because they were ‘written in a bricks and mortar time, and now we’re in a digital time’.
🕵️♂️Climate Change And Cybersecurity🕵️♂️
Most of the hearing centered around other topics, namely climate change and cybersecurity, both of which are related to crypto given the bad press. Gary named chasing yields as a top financial risk and specified that ‘the reach for yield not just by retail investors but investors more broadly’.
🤼♂️Investors vs. Banks🤼♂️
Banks only have power because of the people who park their money there. At any time, those investors could move their money somewhere elsewhere. From where I’m standing, it looks like all that money is moving into crypto, and Gary’s comments are just the tip of the evidence iceberg.
🎤Aftermath Of Gary’s Hearing🎤
Gary told CNBC that the SEC is in the middle of cracking down on cryptocurrency. He also called DeFi an ‘amazing innovation’.
~~~~~ 📜 Disclaimer 📜 The information contained herein is for informational purposes only. Nothing herein shall be construed to be financial legal or tax advice. The content of this video is solely the opinions of the speaker who is not a licensed financial advisor or registered investment advisor. Trading cryptocurrencies poses considerable risk of loss. The speaker does not guarantee any particular outcome.
