Going after small fish
United States Rep. Brad Sherman was one of the doubters of crypto,calling for a full ban of the digital currencies in the United States. Yesterday during a hearing that was held before the House Committee on Financial Services and dealing with crypto Sherman was very vocal about his criticism of the way the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is approaching enforcement when it comes to major crypto exchanges.
Sherman continued his speech by stating that he believed SEC enforcement director Gurbir Grewal was not doing enough and needed to sho “fortitude and courage” in pursuing any cases dealing with securities and against crypto exchanges in The United States.There was mention of how the SEC went after XRP as a security but did very little to go after the exchanges that processed the “tens of thousands” of transactions dealing with the token. Sherman questioned why, if both parties believe XRP to be a security, it is still being sold on exchanges and how those exchanges are not in violation of the law.
Upon being questioned Grewal countered that speaking on investigations into specific crypto exchanges was classified at the moment.He instead referred to Poloniex and the case brought against that company in August of 2021. This case was settled by a $10 million settlement. Sherman was not pleased with this story as he compared that situation to fishing and catching small fish in an ocean of bigger ones.
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The big fish operating the major exchanges did many, many tens of thousands of transactions with XRP. You know it’s a security — that means they were illegally operating a securities exchange. They know it’s illegal because they stopped doing it, even though it was profitable […] I hope you focus on that.”
Crypto and the United States government have not had the best of relationships and more regulations have caused the market to experience a lot of fluctuations. Both Gary Gensler- SEC chair and Grewal spoke on their concerns about crypto enforcement. Gensler has been an active voice for regulation of crypto in the United States. Grewal has cited new methods and complexities making the crypto market more sophisticated and harder to detect misconduct, especially since crypto is in itself international by nature.
The SEC has plans to tackle all issues involving crypto and with a $2.1Bn influx of funds from the President of The United States for Fiscal Year 2023 recently being attained the government branch plans to increase their workforce by 50 for the enforcement division and 20 for their Cyber Unit.