Congress refers to the US SEC’s crypto policy as “rogue.”
In this post: US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler and his fellow commissioners came under heavy fire on Tuesday at a highstakes congressional hearing about how they handled digital assets. The important hearing revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the SEC’s supervision of cryptocurrency.Gensler was criticized by Committee Chair Patrick McHenry for purported regulatory overreach over digital assets.While directing the commission’s aggressive efforts on businesses like Coinbase, Uniswap, and OpenSea, he accused the agency of operating like a rogue agency. Gensler’s SEC is chastised for going too far with crypto The agency’s oversight of cryptocurrency has come under fire once more as detractors call for more open guidelines.Hearings featuring testimony from all five commissioners—Caroline Crenshaw, Jaime Lizárraga, Mark Uyeda, among others—showed the growing rift over the SEC’s approach to regulating digital assets. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, dubbed “crypto mom,” expressed her displeasure with the agency’s ambiguity.In order to hide the lack of regulatory certainty, we’ve adopted a legally ambiguous stance, Peirce said, drawing attention to the ambiguity surrounding the definition of securities in the cryptocurrency sector. “This is the premier agency to protect investors, and it has responsibility for virtually every other intangible investment asset,” Congressman Brad Sherman said at the session. He added, “We can provide clarity, although I don’t think it’s...