by Roslyn Layton. August 31, 2021. (Forbes).
When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed its bombshell lawsuit against cryptocurrency innovator Ripple Labs in December 2020, it didn’t expect blowback. But during the pre-trial phase, Ripple’s legal team has put the SEC itself on trial after years of conflicting and confusing guidance on the rules for cryptocurrencies. No one expected the tsunami of legal, political and social media action from retail cryptocurrency investors, outraged by the betrayal from an agency claiming to protect their interests. The meltdown of the SEC’s credibility with this $2 trillion global investor community exposes a costly SEC miscalculation.
Indeed, official Washington has been back-footed by the size, scale and diversity of the crypto investor class and the industry they support. Lampooned by mainstream media and the U.S. government for years, the crypto community has built a media ecosystem that connects millions of investors, consumers, developers and entrepreneurs across the globe. It’s fitting that the pioneers of the blockchain economy would apply consensus protocols to their communication. This decentralized social media apparatus has proven powerful — just ask Congress after the backlash of the infrastructure bill over a badly written crypto tax provision. When the Ripple lawsuit was filed, that ecosystem galvanized an independent battlefront unexpected by the SEC.