The digital-asset industry draws attention

The US market supervisory authorities have informed the crypto industry and pointed out that they will act against violations such as insider trading and fraud with the same strength with which they follow them in traditional finance.

In the past few weeks, the Securities and Exchange Commission has raised charges against individuals because they allegedly created a $ 300 million "fraudulent crypto pyramid and ponzi system", as well as a procedure against a former employee of the crypto exchange Coinbase.

officers of the agency, including its chairman Gary Gensler, waste little time when this year's turbulence in the markets for digital assets gave investors great losses. Although large parts of the market are unregulated, the SEC uses existing rules in traditional finance to monitor the cryptoma market.

"In the traditional financial world, these types are under the magnifying glass," said Charley Cooper, Managing Director of Blockchain company R3 and former chief of staff at Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulatory authority for derivatives. In contrast, he said that many crypto dealers had "not paid attention" on the assumption that the rules would not apply.

The case of the SEC against the former coin base employee and his employees was well received because the accusations of the supervisory authority are partly based on the fact that at least nine tokens were identified as securities.

stocks, bonds and other securities fall within the watch dog, but there is a heated debate about the extent to which crypto tokens should fall under this umbrella. The former Coinbase employee said that he was "innocent misconduct", while the stock exchange said that she "had zero tolerance for this kind of misconduct".

The case "put the problem of potential insider trade and transfer fraud in the foreground of all crypto companies to ensure that they have adequate guidelines and procedures to prevent insider trade," said Teresa Goody Guillén, partner at Bakerhostetler, A Us

The greatest stock exchanges say that they have many years of confidentiality obligations towards employees. A spokesman for Binance said that every employee is "obliged to a 90-day blocking period for all investments he has made, and the management managers are obliged to report all trading activities quarterly".

Coinbase said that the stock exchange has had formal guidelines for trading digital assets since 2018 - six years after the stock exchange was founded. Bitfinex said it introduced "reasonable" guidelines and procedures against insider trade. Several other large crypto exchanges, including FTX, did not respond to the inquiries from the FT for information about existing guidelines for identifying or reducing insider trade.

The recent cases of the SEC have also caused a stir in Washington, where the legislator debates the framework for regulating crypto-assets, but does not yet have to achieve a consensus.

In the absence of specific rules, Gensler has repeatedly pushed that his agency leads the US approach for crypto and argues that many digital assets are securities. In order to underpin his argument, he cited cases and precedents that arose in US law decades ago.

The indictment against the former coin base employee was "a striking case of 'regulation through enforcement'," said Caroline Pham, a representative of the CFTC, last month. "The accusations of the SEC could have far -reaching effects beyond this individual case and underline how important and urgent it is that the supervisory authorities work together."

and while the SEC is putting out their territory, some legislators in Washington also try to restrict their influence on the crypto industry.

On Wednesday, the Senators Debbie Stabenow and John Boozman sponsored a consumer protection law that would give the CFTC the exclusive responsibility for trading digital raw materials. While only a few expect that the bill will become law, observers say that the proposal will probably influence other laws in the future.

Peter Fox, partner at Scoolidge, Peters, Russotti & Fox, said that he had expected a hard procedure for the second for some time.

"My suspicion is that you kept your fire all winter, while the wealth prices were really high and many of these companies were very popular and the stock exchanges were in the middle of a large advertising blitz.

A previously employed securities lawyer said that the supervisory authority "tends to concentrate more in times of market turbulence" in order to "avoid public criticism that there is somehow a problem with market integrity".

, however, indicate that the lack of regulation meant vacuum that the SEC, as the most powerful market regulator in the United States, remained no choice than to act.

"If you don't do it, nobody has any other than the Ministry of Justice, to take penalty measures," said Charlie Steele, a former lawyer of the US government and now a partner at Forensic Risk Alliance, a regulatory consultation. "It underlines the need that these supervisory authorities find this out."