Tag: SEC Overreach

Gary Gensler’s gross SEC overreach

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By John Deaton. August 21, 2022. (FOX Business).

The Supreme Court may have recently struck down overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency, but at the Securities and Exchange Commission, chairman Gary Gensler remains undeterred in expanding the agency’s power beyond its constitutional boundaries.

For proof, you need no better example than his all-out assault on the cryptocurrency space.

It doesn’t take a constitutional law expert to understand that the SEC has limited jurisdiction over the crypto industry; barring congressional action, front line regulation of digital assets belongs with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – the main regulator of investments that are not deemed traditional securities.

Read the full article here.

For Clarity on Cryptocurrency, Look to Congress or the Supreme Court

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By Curt Levey. August 1, 2022. (The Federalist Society)

With the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies have come increasing calls for its regulation and both uncertainty and overreach concerning the applicability of existing rules. If Congress doesn’t address the regulatory confusion, that job may fall to the Supreme Court.

Most of the attention has focused on the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has sued a number of companies in the cryptocurrency field, citing its authority to regulate securities under the 1933 Securities Act and the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. But that’s quite a stretch. Unsurprisingly, those 90-year-old statutes did not include anything like crypto—that is, digital assets existing only on a decentralized ledger (the “blockchain”) that’s distributed across disparate computers—in their definition of a security.

Instead, the Acts defined a “security” by listing well-understood examples, such as “stock” and “bond,” then adding a catch-all term, “investment contract.” Because cryptocurrency is not among the examples, the SEC argues that crypto is sometimes an investment contract.

Read the full article here.