A well-known US Senator, Elizabeth Warren, appears to be working on a bill that will make sure that cryptocurrencies if securitiesor securities, will be regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Crypto regulation
That reports news platform Semafor Today. Although the details are still missing, the bill would also address a number of issues such as taxation, state security and the climate. Semafor states that Senator Warren also clearly envisions the SEC as the ultimate regulator of the crypto market.
“She works on crypto legislation and believes financial regulators, including the SEC, have broad existing powers to crack down on crypto fraud and illegal money laundering.”
Warren has long been known as quite anti-crypto. That’s how she spoke earlier this year are still outspoken about plans by asset manager Fidelity to enable clients to save for their retirement in the form of bitcoin (BTC). In addition, Warren has always advocated strict and persistent market surveillance.
ICE CEO
The CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Jeffrey Sprecher, also believes that cryptocurrencies should be regulated by the SEC as securities. He spoke yesterday at a conference hosted by Goldman Sachs on the matter.
According to Sprecher, such regulations will benefit the average crypto investor. He states that it will ensure that exchanges will no longer be able to get into weird antics and that investors will be much better protected. According to Sprecher, it is actually almost necessary that the regulation of the crypto market should work in this way.
“What does that mean? It means more transparency, it means segregated client funds, the broker’s role as broker-dealer will be oversight, and the exchanges will be separated from the brokers. Settlement and clearing are separated from the exchanges.”
Sprecher also argued that completely new regulations are not necessarily necessary for crypto, because the securities legal frameworks are already in place and they “will only be more strongly implemented.”
However, labeling crypto as securities will not benefit all projects, as can be seen with the lawsuit between SEC and Ripple (XRP).