Days ahead of Paul Atkins officially taking up the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair position, its acting chair, Mark Uyeda, lambasted the lack of a clear regulatory framework for the crypto industry. Uyeda was speaking at the SEC crypto task force roundtable held on March 21 in Washington, D.C., wherein he urged for new regulations under the Trump administration.
In his address to the crypto task force roundtable, Uyeda gave the reference of the popular ‘SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. (1946)’ case in order to highlight the friction between SEC under the Biden regime and the crypto industry over the issue of cryptocurrencies being treated as “securities.”
“Seventeen years since Satoshi Nakamoto made Bitcoin whitepaper, market participants, lawyers, academics, policymakers, and regulators are still grappling with critical questions related to the status of these novel crypto assets under the federal securities laws This disagreement is most pronounced when it comes to application of the investment contract test established by the Supreme Court in its 1946 opinion in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. (known as the “Howey test”) to crypto assets,” said Mark.
Mark also emphasized on the several cases filed against crypto giants like CZ of Binance, Ripple, and many more under former SEC chairman Gary Gensler under Joe Biden’s administration. Acting SEC Mark T. Uyeda made his point to build new crypto rules and regulations to guide the whole crypto community instead of punishing them.
During the roundtable, Mark had a discussion with regulators, legal experts, and market participants, saying the SEC should embrace formal rulemaking processes to bring clarity to the digital asset space.
“This approach of using notice-and-comment rulemaking or explaining the Commission’s thought process through releases—rather than through enforcement actions—should have been considered for classifying crypto assets under the federal securities laws,” said Mark.
Also read : SEC Commissioners Promises New Crypto Rules at First Roundtable
