Billionaire celebrity investor Mark Cuban thinks the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is treating crypto differently than other industries.
The Dallas Mavericks owner highlights the SEC’s approach to the stock loan industry as an example of how the regulator appears to be using its powers differently against the crypto space.
“Note, they are not calling ‘stock loans’ a security as they are trying to do with the loaning of crypto assets. Nor are they suing the stock loan departments of brokers/banks. They are going through a comments process. They should do the same thing with crypto as an effort to determine which aspects of crypto are securities and which are not and the best way to regulate the industry and protect investors. I think their difference in approach is emblematic of their intent for one industry vs. another.”
Cuban also argues that the SEC’s publicly available materials make it “near impossible” to know what crypto assets are securities.
Last week, the SEC sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao over what the federal agency’s head, Gary Gensler, called “an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”
Additionally, the regulator accuses the top global crypto exchange of engaging in unregistered offers and sales of “crypto asset securities,” including Binance’s native token, BNB. It also listed numerous other tokens it considers “crypto asset securities,” including the Ethereum (ETH) competitors Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL), and the blockchain scaling solution Polygon (MATIC).
The SEC also filed a lawsuit against top US crypto exchange Coinbase on Tuesday, accusing the company of operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.
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