The SEC enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said the commission will continue to bring enforcement actions against all firms, directly and indirectly, involved with cryptocurrencies.
Despite claims that it is “picking winners and losers” and “stifling innovation,” Gurbir Grewal, the enforcement director for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, said the financial agency will keep looking into and taking enforcement actions against cryptocurrency firms.
Grewal responded to claims that the SEC “somehow unfairly targeted crypto” in its enforcement actions when compared to those targeting financial products or traditional markets in written remarks at a Friday seminar organized by the Practising Law Institute.
Additionally, he made a suggestion that the SEC had a duty to those “non-White and lower-income investors” who were drawn to cryptocurrency projects and may have felt that the financial system and its authorities “failed, or just disregarded them.”
Grewal noted that it frequently appears that detractors are irate because the application of well-established laws and precedents to the cryptocurrency industry is not being waived.
“Were we not to investigate and bring appropriate cases just as we always have simply to duck criticism or difficult questions, we’d be acting with both fear and favor,” Grewal said.
The director of SEC enforcement added:
“Non-enforcement of the most fundamental rules underlying our regulatory structure would be a betrayal of trust and not an option for us […] We will continue to bring actions regardless of what label is used or technology is involved (or not). Failure to do so would constitute an abdication of our responsibilities.”
Representative Brad Sherman later criticized the regulatory body, saying that Grewal needed to demonstrate “fortitude and courage” by going after major crypto exchanges in his capacity as enforcement director and not “small fish.”
Officials appointed Grewal as the SEC’s enforcement director in July “The SEC then allegedly attempted to regulate digital assets through enforcement actions by filing a complaint against a former Coinbase employee and designating nine tokens as “crypto asset securities.”
At the same Practising Law Institute conference on Thursday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said he supported legislation that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more power, so long as it didn’t “inadvertently undercut securities rules.”
