In the meantime, the SEC has made clear that it believes there are exchanges offering trading in unregistered securities, said Tyler Gellasch, a former agency attorney who pointed to Coinbase as an example.
The SEC filed insider trading charges in 2022 against a former Coinbase employee, alleging at the time that seven unregistered securities were trading on the exchange. Coinbase has denied the claims.
But the agency has yet to bring a banner case against Coinbase or any other crypto exchange. And until the SEC is regularly doing as much, it risks losing “public credibility as well as political credibility,” said Gellasch, who now leads the institutional investor advocacy group Healthy Markets Association.
“If they’re here to protect investors,” Gellasch said, “they have to bring the cases.”
Source: ‘They’re boiling the frog’: SEC’s new crypto crackdown roils industry – POLITICO
