The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has received a lot of criticism lately over the way it handled issues in the digital assets industry. The latest high-profile personality to air his concern is billionaire Mark Cuban who warned that the SEC might come up with nightmare crypto regulation.
In a tweet on July 23, the Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner warned that the SEC would introduce new rules on crypto token registration that he described as a nightmare for the crypto industry. His tweet was a response to a tweet by U.S. Senator Pat Toomey who criticized the regulator for its enforcement action against a former employee of the crypto exchange Coinbase where the watchdog identified nine tokens as securities, according to Bitcoin.com.
In his post, Senator Toomey slammed the regulator for taking action yet failing to disclose to market participants how it determines if a token is classified as a security. “Yesterday’s enforcement action is the perfect example of the SEC having a clear opinion on how and why certain tokens classify as securities,” Senator Toomey posted on Twitter on July 23. “Yet the SEC failed to disclose their view before launching an enforcement action.”
Cuban responded to Toomey’s tweet by suggesting that things could still get worse. “Think this is bad? Wait till you see what they come up with for registration of tokens,” the billionaire tweeted on the same day. “That's the nightmare that's waiting for the crypto industry. How else do you keep thousands of lawyers employed and create reasons to ask for more taxpayer money?”
Aside from Senator Toomey, Tom Emmer, the Republican Congressman from Minnesota, also criticized the SEC’s for its recent enforcement actions and even described it as a power-hungry regulator that threatened players in the digital assets industry. “Time and time again, you placed the cause of blame for this erosion of trust almost squarely on the shoulders of industry participants and companies,” Emmer told SEC Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal at the House Committee on Financial Services hearing.
“Mr. Grewal, the SEC is in no way blameless here…,” he added. “Under Chair Gensler, the SEC has become a power-hungry regulator, politicizing enforcement, baiting companies to ‘come in and talk’ to the Commission, then hitting them with enforcement actions, discouraging good-faith cooperation”
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