Blockchain Association policy director Jake Chervinsky says the U.S. Congress will ultimately establish the laws of the land to govern the cryptocurrency industry, not the Securities and Exchange Commission, which this month launched a wave of enforcement measures against digital asset companies. The SEC and other regulators are bound by this “legal reality,” he said.
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Fast facts
- Neither the SEC nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “have the authority to comprehensively regulate crypto,” Chervinsky said in a statement. Twitter feed Tuesday.
- Chervinsky called 2022 the “worst year in crypto history” due to the collapse of Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX.com, which he said caused “massive damage” to reputation. of the industry and caused skeptics to rush to regulate, he added.
- Chervinsky said the ideological divide between House Republicans and Democrats has stalled debate over digital asset regulation, leading agencies to “extend their authority beyond recognition to” get things done. “without Congress, whether the law permits it or not”.
- The policy chief called the SEC “crypto’s chief antagonist” and criticized the agency’s recent actions, calling it “regulation by enforcement.”
- On Thursday, crypto exchange Kraken shut down its crypto staking program and paid a US$30 million fine after the SEC said the program violated securities law. Shortly after, Paxos Trust Company stopped minting the Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin, which has a collateral of US$16 billion, under the order of the New York Department of Financial Services.
- In response, Chervinsky suggested asking Congress to take additional action and educate him on the industry. He also called for using the courts to bring lawsuits against regulators to compel them to adhere to stricter definitions of existing laws and help set legal precedents.
- “Politics is made in all three branches of government, and we have ignored the judiciary for too long,” he said, adding that he remains optimistic about the future of the crypto industry in the US. UNITED STATES.
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