{"id":828,"date":"2022-07-30T16:50:42","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T16:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/2022\/07\/30\/the-sec-is-quietly-cracking-down-on-crypto-as-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-xrp-solana-cardano-luna-shiba-inu-and-dogecoin-recover\/"},"modified":"2022-07-30T16:50:42","modified_gmt":"2022-07-30T16:50:42","slug":"the-sec-is-quietly-cracking-down-on-crypto-as-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-xrp-solana-cardano-luna-shiba-inu-and-dogecoin-recover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/2022\/07\/30\/the-sec-is-quietly-cracking-down-on-crypto-as-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-xrp-solana-cardano-luna-shiba-inu-and-dogecoin-recover\/","title":{"rendered":"The SEC Is Quietly Cracking Down On Crypto As Price Of Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Luna, Shiba Inu, And Dogecoin Recover"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n

The SEC Chair, Gary Gensler<\/p>\n

<\/fbs-accordion>Getty Images<\/small>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The crypto rebound is alive and kicking.<\/p>\n

Over the past week, the price of bitcoin soared 4.2%, currently trading at $23,800, and the ethereum price jumped 7.9% to just over $1,700. Most altcoins are following the majors\u2019s suit. XRPXRP<\/a>
\n <\/fbs-ticker> is up 2.1%, cardano 5.1%, BNB
BNB<\/a>
\n <\/fbs-ticker> 8.9%, solana 1.5%, and Terra\u2019s \u201cluna 2.0\u201d 1.55%, while shiba inu and dogecoin are down a few basis points. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has shaken up the crypto community with yet another bombshell. On July 21, the SEC filed insider trading charges against an ex-product manager at Coinbase and his two relatives. <\/p>\n

\u201cNikhil Wahi and Ramani allegedly purchased at least 25 crypto assets, at least nine of which were securities, and then typically sold them shortly after the announcements for a profit. The long-running insider trading scheme generated illicit profits totaling more than $1.1 million,\u201d the SEC\u2019s press release stated.<\/a><\/p>\n

An SEC probe into the U.S.\u2019s largest crypto exchange is profound on its own. (Coinbase stock crashed ~20% on the news.) But the sheer semantics of the investigation carries a much bigger takeaway: for the first time, the SEC has officially declared a cryptocurrency as a security.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Zooming out<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been reading my newsletter<\/a>, this shouldn\u2019t come as much of a shocker to you. <\/p>\n

As I reported, last month the Senate introduced the most comprehensive crypto legislation to date aiming to overhaul how crypto is regulated. Among other things, the bill wants to classify digital assets into two buckets\u2014commodities and securities\u2014and put them under the regulatory purview of the SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Responsible Financial Innovation Act<\/em> seeks to classify digital assets into securities and commodities and regulate them accordingly. This will \u201cgive digital asset companies the ability to determine what their regulatory obligations will be and give regulators the clarity they need to enforce existing securities and commodities trading laws.\u201d For example, bitcoin and ether, which fall into the \u201ccommodity\u201d bucket, would be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), \u201d I wrote back then.<\/p>\n

The SEC\u2019s charges against Coinbase are an initial sign that regulators are in favor of the view that non-autonomous cryptos\u2014which raise money from the public with a promise of capital gains\u2014are no different than stocks and have to comply with the same laws.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, who\u2019s who?<\/p>\n

Judging by lawmaker rhetoric, the strongest contestants to persevere as commodities are bitcoin and ether\u2014the most widespread autonomous cryptos. In fact, in a recent interview, the SEC\u2019s Chair, Gary Gensler, singled out bitcoin as the only cryptocurrency, he and his \u201cpredecessors\u201d think deserves a commodity status.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome like bitcoin, and that\u2019s the only one I\u2019m gonna say\u2026 my predecessors and others have said, they\u2019re a commodity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s important because being an \u201cofficial\u201d commodity status kicks open the floodgates of institutional capital. As Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategyMSTR<\/a>
\n <\/fbs-ticker>, tweeted in response to Gensler\u2019s comments, a commodity status \u201cis essential for any treasury reserve asset.\u201d <\/p>\n

The rest of the cryptocurrencies, in the SEC chair\u2019s opinion, belong in the securities bucket. In his recent address, Gensler argued that most cryptos fit the \u201cinvestment contract\u201d definition under the Howey Test<\/a>, which technically subjects them to the Security Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934.<\/p>\n

Would a security label hurt cryptos? At the end of the day, it\u2019s probably more of a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n

On one hand, it would burden both exchanges and cryptos with strict compliance and bring many smaller players to their knees. On the other, crypto \u201cstandardization\u201d could open the doors to millions of retail investors through traditional investment vehicles like ETFs.<\/p>\n

Stay ahead of the crypto trends with <\/strong>Meanwhile in Markets<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Every day, I put out a story that explains what\u2019s driving the crypto markets. Subscribe here<\/a> to get my analysis and crypto picks in your inbox.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SEC Chair, Gary Gensler Getty Images The crypto rebound is alive and kicking. Over the past week, the price of bitcoin soared 4.2%, currently trading at $23,800, and the ethereum price jumped 7.9% to just over $1,700. Most altcoins are following the majors\u2019s suit. XRPXRP is up 2.1%, cardano 5.1%, BNBBNB 8.9%, solana 1.5%, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solanacrypto.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}