SEC Enforcement Director: 'We're Not Concerned With the Labels' in Crypto Cases

"Regulation by enforcement" is "a catchy but bushed refrain that's utilized efficaciously by crypto marketplace participants and lobbyists," said the caput of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Enforcement Division Friday.

The SEC has been enforcing existing rules and regulations, said Gurbir Grewal to an assemblage of academics and lawyers during a sheet co-hosted by the Lowenstein Sandler instrumentality steadfast and Rutgers Law School, successful immoderate of his archetypal nationalist remarks since the SEC brought charges against crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance.

The moderators asked astir the SEC's caller actions and the conception of regularisation by enforcement. The regulator, who utilized to beryllium the Attorney General successful New Jersey, said the bureau was continuing to oversee the crypto manufacture but that it was focused connected activities wrong the sector, alternatively than the tokens themselves.

"We're not acrophobic with the labels. We're acrophobic with the offerings, the labels are not important to us," Grewal said. "The exertion is important. What's underneath the hood, due to the fact that erstwhile we look underneath the hood, erstwhile we footwear the tires, we've seen plentifulness ... DeFi [decentralized finance] offers that are neither decentralized nor concern but alternatively conscionable consecutive [fraud]."

He besides spoke to the emergence successful caller enforcement actions wrong the crypto sector.

"I deliberation what you've seen is that the crypto markets successful the downturn, the summation successful hazard has forced america to absorption our efforts here. Maybe that's been perceived arsenic an uptick, but I deliberation it's america conscionable doing our jobs arsenic we person been for the past fewer years," helium said.

"We volition widen our jurisdiction arsenic acold arsenic the instrumentality allows," Grewal said. "We person tremendous practice with a batch of regulators. We conscionable with them frequently, we person MOUs [memoranda of understanding] with a batch of regulators that facilitate our quality to cod grounds abroad. And I deliberation the much we bash that, the much practice that exists among regulators, the little abstraction that determination is betwixt america and the [U.K.'s] FCA and [Australia's] ASIC and others that we enactment [with]... I deliberation the little accidental [there is] for regulatory arbitrage by atrocious actors."