JAKARTA One of Forbes journalists, Roslyn Layton criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to Laytonton, the SEC used regulatory tactics with enforcement in an article entitled "Gary Gensler: Resign". The US regulator is considered to have made unilateral and arbitrary decisions in cracking down on crypto industry players.

The SEC has become a scourge of spreading fear at crypto industry players because they can take action suddenly. Because the crypto industry players do not know what kind of rules the SEC is. This is because of the lack of clarity of regulations in Uncle Sam's country.

Roslyn Layton emphasized in her article that the increasing number of SEC cases against cryptocurrencies that have been resolved indicates that the agency does not have clear rules.

Indeed, about 90 percent of SEC cases were resolved rather than resolved in court. High levels of enforcement and settlement suggest that SEC rules are unclear and may not exist," Layton was quoted as saying by CryptoSlate.

Furthermore, he noted that the Op-Ed article from the SEC Chair recently entitled SEC Treating Crypto Like the rest of the Capital Market was baseless, given the number of cases that had been imposed against crypto companies.

"So many lawsuits suggest that the SEC prefers to'regulate with law enforcement (the lawsuit against financial actors intended to extract settlements) rather than regulatory regulations," he added.

The scathing criticism of US regulators is still ongoing, this unit counts about 200 lawsuits (Crypto) since its founding in 2017, with fraud being the subject of at least 80 investigations. The agency also reported a $2 billion recovery in the form of monetary assistance.

According to Layton, the Securities and Exchange Commission has dedicated hundreds of lawyers assigned to sue the company for failing to comply with agency rules, which still cannot be found on the SEC website.

Furthermore, Layton urged regulators to gather legal experts to draw up crypto rules more clearly. The clarity of these rules will facilitate the development of the crypto industry itself. In this case, crypto industry players will no longer need to be wary of SEC actions.

Crypto perpetrators have been calling on Congress and the SEC for clear rules for years, but that hasn't happened yet. Gensler has been working for a year and a half. It's time to get things done," Layton said.

Ripple vs SEC case

An example is the Ripple vs SEC case. In this case, US regulators accused Ripple Labs of selling unregistered securities. In addition, the SEC entered XRP coins as securities referring to SEC official William Hinman's speech in 2018. In fact, in other countries, including in Indonesia, XRP is a commodity. Just like other digital assets.

For Layton, while the SEC continues to claim that all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin are securities, that's a fact some crypto assets may be currency.

The question about currency or security is the core of SEC v. Ripple Labs and XRP's digital currency status," Layton added.

In particular, SEC officials considered whether XRP was security for a while before William Hinman delivered a controversial ETH free pass speech.

Unfortunately, the SEC did not conduct an investigation or make regulations before proceeding to accuse Ripple of violating US securities rules during the 2013 Initial Coin Offer (ICO).

"The SEC further alleges that Ripple should have known XRP was the security of a ledger debut in 2013, although the SEC itself did not know until it filed a lawsuit in 2020," Layton wrote.

"Gary Gensler: Resign" article Deleted, Crypto Community Holds Petition

After the article was published, a few days later it was no longer accessible to the public. Layton wrote his views in an article entitled "Gary Gensler: Resign" published in Forbes on August 25, 2022. The removal of the article sparked speculation from the crypto community on social media.

The crypto community responded by holding a petition on Change.org to demand SEC chairman Gary Gensler from his leadership. The petition targets 25,000 signatures, to date 16,290 have signed the petition.


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