If the first half of the year is distinguished by US securities regulators slapping fine Regarding cryptocurrency exchanges, we will warn of legal action and follow up. sameThe second half began in Asia, where many jurisdictions enacted new rules for exchanges without litigation.
On the other hand, in some Asian countries, Singapore and sea breamseems to follow the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) frowning on certain products offered by exchanges, but so far its approach in Asia has been a litigation rather than a legal battle, in contrast to North America. You seem to value clarity.
John Rizzo, senior vice president of public affairs at Washington-based public relations firm Clyde Group, said in an emailed statement that the U.S. is in a political and regulatory war over how to manage the cryptocurrency industry. .
“Congress has decided to Cryptocurrency market structureHowever, the SEC appears determined to effectively ban cryptocurrencies,” said Rizzo, a former U.S. Treasury Department spokesperson for digital assets.
According to Zenon Kapron, founder of Asia-based fintech consultancy Capronasia, cryptocurrencies have “always been in a precarious position in the United States” because regulation was never clear. “For this reason, many companies have focused on overseas markets from the beginning,” Kapron said in his email interview.
Nick Luck, Chief Operations Officer of blockchain infrastructure platform ContentFi Labs, agrees.
“The biggest problem in the U.S. cryptocurrency industry stems from regulators’ attempts to apply a 100-year-old framework to new innovations in financial technology,” Luck said in a text message comment.
According to him, Asian countries are attracting cryptocurrency companies by clarifying the rules and adapting to innovation.
South Korea is one of them. Diet at the end of June approved The bill is focused on protecting the interests of cryptocurrency investors.
Singapore and Thailand have also introduced regulations, including bans cryptocurrency staking However, Singapore officials added that the product is still under study.
Don’t forget Hong Kong. It was once home to the now-bankrupt FTX exchange, which started all the bad things in the cryptocurrency trading platform.
Hong Kong introduced One of the Asian jurisdictions vying for status as a leading digital asset center, with all its potential investment, employment and financial technology advantages, tightening its own cryptocurrency trading regulations on June 1. It is one.
strict rules
Asia’s new cryptocurrency rules are tough, with penalties for violations and will require restructuring by some cryptocurrency businesses. Rasanka PereraThe CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve Singapore said he welcomed the new traffic rules in the city-state.
“This will not only underscore the regulator’s belief in protecting investors, but will undoubtedly further enhance the confidence of the corporate and institutional sector,” Perera said in an emailed statement.
South Korea’s Virtual Asset User Protection Act will take a year to come into force, but parliament says it is the first step toward creating a legal framework for digital assets in the country. Official website.
The bill was approved just over a year after the collapse of the US$40 billion Terra-Luna cryptocurrency and stablecoin founded in South Korea that cost hundreds of thousands of investors.
As the name suggests, the South Korean bill focuses on investor protection and includes penalties for rule violations such as fines and imprisonment.
As an aside, Terra-Luna project founder Kwon Do-hyun is currently in prison in Montenegro after fleeing to Europe. Both South Korea and the United States want him extradited on fraud charges. he denies the charges.
lots of bills
Back in the U.S., Congress has had a broad debate on digital assets, writes John Cahill, an attorney in the New York office of the law firm Wilson-Elther. forkast Commentary for this month.
In recent hearings with the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairs, Diverse opinions on cryptocurrencies And there’s also the legislative deadlock, Cahill said.
30 or more proposed bill Bills related to digital assets have been introduced in Congress, but nothing has progressed to date, and Congress has yet to pass substantive legislation in this area, Cahill said.
“The legislature is reluctant to take concrete action despite ongoing efforts to gather information,” he said.
As such, national courts are stepping up to interpret digital assets within existing legal frameworks, Cahill said. However, progress has been slowed as “courts are flooded with submissions detailing why digital assets should or should not be considered securities.”
“As Congress and its voters continue to learn about this developing technology, it is up to the U.S. court system to bridge current law to digital assets while navigating these uncharted legal territories,” Cahill said. added.
Is the SEC just doing its job?
After last year’s Terra-Luna and FTX exchange meltdowns cost millions of investors billions of dollars and caused a chain of bankruptcies for dozens of related companies, no one in the digital asset industry is not saying the SEC has fixed the problem, it’s all wrong.
Blockstation, a blockchain-driven platform for tokenizing, listing, trading, clearing and settling digital assets and securities, compiled an internal memo in 2015 in which the cryptocurrency market reached nearly $1 trillion market cap. He reportedly said regulators would react. with coercive measures.
“We called out.
“Regulators are opposed to unlicensed brokers dealing in securities, and they are opposed to unregistered securities being offered to the public,” he said. “What the industry calls cryptocurrencies are mostly securities and it is the fiduciary duty of regulators to protect investors,” he added.
Most of what the industry calls cryptocurrencies are securities, and it is the fiduciary duty of regulators to protect investors.
Blockstation CEO Jay Waterman
Waterman said that when he asked investors if they wanted to send money to Binance for bitcoin trading or if they wanted Merrill Lynch to do the same, most would choose the latter, which established brokerage firms trust. Because of its reliability, governance and proven infrastructure, he added.
The missing element, he said, is that these institutions have not received proper guidance from regulators and lacked the technology and training required for blockchain.
A spokesperson for Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, said: forkast He said the SEC lawsuit was “long-anticipated action” and that Congress was “taking very seriously the regulation of the stablecoin and digital asset markets.”
“It’s a clear indication that three branches of the U.S. government now, in effect, want the bill,” he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
