The Securities and Exchange Commission's top enforcer, Gurbir Grewal, condemned the crypto industry over its "significant noncompliance" and addressed criticism lodged at the agency over the years.
"Over this past decade, we have confronted significant noncompliance and many, many creative attempts by market participants to avoid our jurisdiction, with some claiming that we're making it up as we go, that we are regulating by enforcement and others arguing that we are somehow recklessly exceeding our authorities," Grewal said. Grewal also noted that his views don't necessarily reflect the agency's.
Grewal said the test to determine whether crypto is a security is the Howey Test, referring to a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case frequently cited by the SEC to determine whether an asset qualifies as an investment contract and, therefore, a security. "At the same time, we've been accused of picking winners and losers, stifling innovation, and driving crypto businesses to some more favorable foreign jurisdictions wherever they may exist," Grewal said, taking a shot at the crypto industry for what he described as, "a decade's worth of verbal gymnastics that are just a backhanded way of saying that 'we want a different set of rules that apply to everyone else.