ShapeShift’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission “adds ambiguity” to the cryptocurrency industry, the agency’s Republican members said as they rebuked the agency’s recent enforcement actions.
“The Commission’s enforcement action against ShapeShift is the latest in a continuing drama of the Commission’s ill-conceived cryptocurrency policy,” said SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda. name On Wednesday.
The SEC announced Tuesday that it has filed a trading halt against the cryptocurrency company. shape movement He was charged with operating as an unregistered securities dealer. The agency applied the Howey test, based on a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case frequently cited by the SEC, to determine whether assets qualify as securities.
“This enforcement action highlights the negative consequences of the Commission’s approach to regulating the cryptocurrency space and adds to the ambiguity hanging over the cryptocurrency world,” the commissioners said. “It is entirely unclear how ShapeShift identified that the Commission considers cryptocurrency assets in general, and all cryptocurrency assets in particular, to be securities in the form of investment contracts.”
SEC’s Approach
Two Republican commissioners have been critical of the SEC’s enforcement approach toward cryptocurrencies. Over the past few years, the SEC has been actively taking legal action against cryptocurrency companies, including notable cases against cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase last year.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly said that cryptocurrency platforms must be registered with the agency and that many cryptocurrencies are securities. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency industry argued as follows: Without a clear regulatory path in the U.S., I think it’s difficult to remain compliant and still be competitive.
Peirce and Uyeda said they were “clearly unsatisfied” with the SEC’s “just come and register” approach.
“This fiction is undermined by the Commission’s failure to determine whether the specific assets in our case were securities,” they said. “The standards are so opaque and arbitrary that the committee itself is reluctant to follow its own analysis. If a case-by-case decision is possible, we respectfully request that the committee show its work.”
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About the author
Sarah is a reporter for The Block covering policy, regulation and legal events. Sarah was previously a reporter writing about securities regulation at CQ Legal, where she first began her reporting on cryptocurrencies. She Sarah has also written for The Bond Buyer and American Banker, among other financial publications. She graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in Print and Digital Journalism. Sarah lives in Washington, DC and she is an avid coffee lover. You can follow her on Twitter @ForTheWynn.