Close
The recent increase in regulatory action across the globe may be the result of decision-makers’ recent realization of the significance of cryptocurrencies.
A panel discussion on cryptocurrency laws in the UK, Europe, and the US was the subject of a Liam J. Kelly piece that appeared in Decrypt earlier today. The panel discussion took place at Citi’s 10th Annual Digital Money Symposium, which was held in London on March 30. Nicole Sandler, Head of Digital Policy at Barclays, asserted during the event that lawmakers’ apparent tardiness in responding was, in fact, deliberate.
According to the Decrypt story, Sandler thinks that some officials allowed the cryptocurrency market to develop on its own purposefully because they predicted that it would eventually crash. Instead, it has carried on expanding.
She claimed:
“I think one thing certain policymakers have said is that they left this market to do what it wanted to do because they thought it would essentially die. And it hasn’t died, it’s grown, it’s grown, it’s grown.“
The regulatory structure for digital assets was a topic of conversation between Sandler and the European Commission in 2016. Sandler claimed that while the crypto space may have been in its infancy at the time, it has since matured.
The piece emphasized Sandler’s contention that regulators decided to keep an eye on the market’s development rather than ignore it because of its infancy. She stated that the current problem is that implementing regulations can take a very long period.
The report from Decrypt also covered the stern regulatory assault in the US. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Sam Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh, the crypto exchange’s co-lead developer, of defrauding investors after Bankman-Fried’s FTX company collapsed in November. According to a statement from Sandler, the FTX failure was mainly caused by a “bad actor” rather than the technology itself.
The piece also discussed the SEC’s chase of other cryptocurrency companies for a variety of reasons. It described how the SEC issued a Wells Notice to Coinbase on March 22, informing the exchange in California that it would be subject to enforcement action over claims that its staking products comprised unregistered stocks. The leadership of Coinbase is upset with the SEC’s abrupt change after permitting American investors to engage in cryptocurrency for years, a source familiar with the situation told Decrypt.
According to reports, the regulatory action has angered the cryptocurrency community, with much of it aimed at SEC Chair Gary Gensler. As noted in the piece, fellow panelist Ijeoma Okoli noted that Gensler encountered a similar level of hostility while serving as the CFTC’s chair in the wake of the financial crisis, indicating that his strategy is not unique to the crypto sector.
