Bitcoin Forum

As we all know the SEC so far was established for checkmating exchange activities be it Fiat or crypto currency but it's current outburst on crypto currencies and projects is unbecoming. Now I ask to what extent has the SEC really contributed to the improvement of the blockchain industry over the years past. Recently, binance is under investigation only God knows what the outcome would look like. I need you honest opinion.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-06/us-probes-binance-over-token-that-is-now-world-s-fifth-largest&ved=2ahUKEwja4v_-yp34AhUJXxoKHVBTBEQQ0PADKAB6BAgVEAE&usg=AOvVaw2qFWiLCpAehI6iLamIpmbw

SEC and other organizations and impartial investigative parties are working to ensure that investors are not deceived as a result of the emotional investment resulting from the rapid profit that is being portrayed in social media.

Binance takes advantage of novice investors and others by listing some currencies, helping to promote them and then selling at a point that leads to all beginners losing their money. If this model is done in agreement with the platform, the authorities will investigate such violations, just as happened in the recent scam related to Luna.

As for the blockchain, it is decentralized and therefore it is difficult to impose government control over it, but the more we have strong central platforms and they are investigated, the faster we develop.

Only thing that the SEC can do nowadays right here in the Philippines is to warn investors about the risks in investing into cryptocurrencies and publish advisory against scam companies that are mostly into pyramiding and ponzi schemes using Bitcoin and other cryptos as front like Forsage.

You won’t find me saying a whole lot of good about the SEC as a financial advisor (someone who’s directly regulated by the SEC), but I think these recent roll outs have been a positive overall. They could be like some nations and come out and straight up ban cryptocurrency, but they haven’t.  Regulation is needed.  If they didn't have some sort of regulation then I think the crypto atmosphere would suffer on a number of levels.

SEC never works in the interest of cryptocurrency or blockchain tech.  If they have plans and activities it is to make sure that the government has control over them.  The only contribution SEC has to the blockchain industry is to let it operate under its radar thus making an impression of government adoption.  But seriously, it never helps in the propagation and adoption of blockchain tech specifically cryptocurrency.

Aside from the task of regulating and check mating stock market assets sec have widely been in the center of the promotion and awareness of cryptocurrency market, giving investors warning before their make wrong investment decisions but failed to make proper checkmate of some centralized companies who till now operate  unchecked. Just as hugeblack rightly said Bitcoin is a decentralized asset and can not be controlled by the sec decision or any regulations only exchange and other services can be regulated, the SEC have been silent on blockchain technology as that is outside the scope of SEC what they're interested in are the digital currencies that are operated within the blockchain which is just a portion of the blockchain so the SEC has no strong standing law against blockchain industry.

SEC didn't have any contribution to the exchange, they're making worst for the people who have high privacy concern and since Bitcoin is pseudonymous, you're free to choose to reveal your identity or not. But because of SEC, they're forcing any citizens who have Bitcoin to revealing his identity by asking KYC. Though there's a P2P platform, but many people are prefer to use centralized exchange.

I think the SEC will fight crypto all the time they both exist ;D

Maybe they think they're being helpful, but they're mostly doing more harm than good. They sure love going against BTC, while overlooking the obviously bad schemes that will be obviously harmful to people (like Richard Heart's HEX).

Every organization that is operated by the government will do more bad to cryptocurrency than good. However, the duty of the SEC is to regulate the market ^{which is against the definition of decentralization}, protect the investors interest, and maintain the fairness of the market.
They never make that much contribution to the blockchain industry although, they make the institutional investors have confidence in crypto but they will always play a self game though.

I don't think they had a contribution in the blockchain industry, they're more likely always at the lookout or eavesdropping to do somewhat they call regulations. I don't think in the coming years or decade to come they'll be able to contribute, they'll always be that organization that just warns the public to extent that crypto is a too risky asset.

my view of regulators is that they should be more concerned and emphasising the consumer protection side of things, and less concerned with the consumer suspicious behaviour side.

EG they want exchanges to monitor the customers. but the regulators dont really monitor the businesses to the same fine detail. and instead wait for customers to complain to regulators about bad exchanges.. . this doesnt seem a fair balance

this is because regulators are very willing and happy to arrest suspicious customers and send people that do petty crimes of $1k-$10k through the court system . yet when exchanges fleece/steal/scam/cause issues to thousands of users where millions of dollars are lost... .. they do flimsy investigations.. and demand small petty fines in comparison to exchanges yearly sales

EG if someone is on say minimum wage meaning $20k a year salary, but gets a large fine bigger than their early income.. then businesses that do bad things should be fined more then their yearly sales too... its only fair.

but with that rant said. legitimising businesses can help people learn which are the exchanges that would most likely still be operating in a few years and would look after customers funds better. compared to the wild west scenario scenario of 2010-2017* where any website stating to being an exchange could just run off with customers funds and no one could tell the difference.
(*think about all the exchanges that ever existed. but no longer operating in recent years)

They don't. There were at least 10 earthquakes in btc price because of sec, fuck them. They do nothing for no one, just follow the interests of those who flow money in their pockets

Without the SEC, a lot of persons by now may have lost their investment to dubious projects started with the aim of selling poor & short term security to unsuspecting individuals. There's no need for you OP to involve sentiments as i suspect that you maybe love and make use of the services of binance, but the SEC are out to mostly protect customer/user interest and that is their contribution. Authorities like the SEC are contributing to the Blockchain industry by ensuring that Exchanges do not take advantage of the system.

Binance is just being investigated, they have not been found guilty of what is being investigated which is them breaking SEC rules which involves securities during the time they launched BNB, it's a long time ago, but such investigations and follow ups are necessary to prevent other exchanges from following in the step of binance if they really did not adhere to the rules.

the SEC could do more..
rather then make many policies where exchange businesses have to monitor customers more for things like russian/chinese trade, and ban chinese/russian investors because its illegal for chinese/russian citizens to invest in crypto..

. what the SEC should do is legitimise financial insurance companies to be able to take in crypto as collateral to offer insurance policies for exchanges. so that exchanges can have insured accounts for its customers should the exchange go bankrupt/default/just shut down and run off.

. what the SEC should do is legitimise financial auditors where by an auditor can check the 'books' (blockchain) and validate that the exchange is keeping 100% funds in reserve and not doing any fractional reserve practices with customers funds deposited into exchanges custody.
.. or simply force exchanges to display a 'audit' page on their website that shows all their hot/cold wallet addresses and total up the coins held in an exchange. for transparency for all to view

Bit of a strange stance to take against the SEC, it has a very hard job to do between regulating potentially manipulative market behaviors, looking after end users who might be susceptible to new schemes (NFT's kinda imploded recently) and trying to create laws that are not too stifling either. In fairness to them they gave cryptocurrency a rather light touch when it came to regulation, many other oppressive countries haven chosen to ban such technology outright. If anything the SEC is usually far behind the curve and could be taking a more proactive stance against risky trends in the market place. I'd say we're getting off lightly based on how it is enforcing it right now.

And what they did is right, unlike the other countries which is the one who introduce banning. However, this can't be enough to stop crypto from growing and to stop scamming in the same way. SEC has just been too vocal about scams, their campaign is very helpful to the community in spreading awareness but somehow, people have just been ignoring them. I guess they need to be more aggressive in dealing with this scam and Ponzi scheme issues otherwise, many people still become a victim of these evil activities.

The world should have laws to keep moving, and protect citizens in normal life, protect investors in financial markets. There are good news and bad news for each project with SEC or with law regulation but the whole market get benefit from SEC and strict regulation. I see it is good.

It is like the crypto market was manipulated with SEC news in 2017 to 2019. SEC consideration, potential approval, reject, etc. In a few weeks, few months, market can be affected negatively but after a few years, the market grows very bullish.

I don't see reasonable why it takes 5 years for SEC to try investigating about Binance. It is likely a fud, not actual news about investigation from SEC.

Decentralization, anonymous transaction are parts of blockchain. Even without it, blockchain brings many advantage to users. They can not have it with bank transfer, and any centralized transactions.

They're not really doing anything to contribute imo. They're a watchdog of sorts, taking checks and the likes to see if there'd be anything that would go wrong that they could take advantage to push the crypto scene down in general. They do warn people about the risks involved in investments, but it's more like of a small pinch instead of a tight slap which leads to most newbies pretty much ignoring them which again, leads to newbie investors losing their money eventually.

You are saying that they are investigating so that people wouldn't be scammed, but whenever they find a problem with anywhere, they just give them a fine, and get paid about it and let them move on. How is that helping us? Like last year, they realized that USDT is not backed properly, and needed to liquidate some amount, which USDT did and thank god for that, but then SEC charged them with 19 million dollars or something if I am not wrong, then let them be.

So right now, USDT could be not backed again, nobody would know. This is why I believe that they are basically extorting money from the bad companies to keep on scamming us and nothing more, not helping us at all.

How will they prove that cryptocurrencies are bad? For example, what Luna^[1] did more harm to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies than drug and arms trade issues.

Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies are one of the biggest reasons for the failure of the blockchain economy and the centralized economy, and therefore the increased investment in these currencies gives governments sufficient regulatory reasons.

If people stop investing in these currencies or keep investing in bitcoin, most of our problems will be over.

[1] Terra (LUNA) Is Down 99%: Will Crypto Survive? (https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/05/17/terra-is-down-97-will-crypto-survive/)

SEC has done more harm than good to the blockchain industry to be very honest. From time to time it has brought in news like banning bitcoin or Cryptos which has really taken away money from lots of investors who sold their holdings in FUD. It's true that more or less SEC has brought in some regulation into the picture by slowly probing into whatever is happening in the crypto world but I think until now they should have already brought in a good legislation which unfortunately they haven't , so really they haven't made a big impact on crypto industry.

IMO, I believe that the SEC's actions are just normal and only exercising the mandate that was given to them as a government agency, so their actions are justifiable because they are part of the greater centralized government bureaucracy and their job is to implement the laws and guidelines especially if there's an investment and money involved.

And about the question of what the SEC has contributed to the Blockchain industry so far, I think they are making the Blockchain industry a more secure and regulation-abiding space.     

Not in general as for sure some of them are working hard to fill their obligation and to protect others from the harm and negative impact of scams on the society.

However, sometimes we don't like their approach toward crypto and even have a negative view of this. I guess this was because many people, scammers are using the name Bitcoin especially to scam people which could influence their minds to think that this was a threat to anyone in society.

Like some people would say that they are doing great works fine about that but what about the new start up tech companies out there? Billing them huge amount to be domicile with the sec is nothing much encouraging. I happened to have a conversation with one of the start up project in Africa which has a lot to showcase to the world and really great product they have to offer but they needed to pay a whooping sum of $1 million to get registered before they try to start up and this has caused the company setback as investors are beginning to get worried and pressuring the board members for a refund. It's quite not fair about the sec dealings.

I don't really see how the SEC could have contributed in any way to the crypto world. Every now and then they start saying that this coin or that token is a security, they just make waste a lot of time and energy, and the majority of the times the explanations they give are pretty questionable. It's very simple: they want to have control over everything, cryptos for them are just a problem.

The SEC has been downright evil in the way that it has pursued LBRY in it's case with them. They have been nothing but honest and up front, building a stellar product and fully compliant with the SEC. And then they get the book thrown at them.

https://odysee.com/@unregisteredpodcast:b/unregistered-205-jeremy-kauffman:7

And then of course, you have the most obvious scams and bullshit of all time like Bitconnect, Terra/LUNA, SHIB, and god knows what else, not even scratching the surface here, and the SEC goes radio silent.

They have bullshit agendas. They are part of the government and the government is fucking evil and corrupt to the core.

If they actually acted in good faith, then fine. But that without question is not happening.

Not done with Ripple, now SEC is targeting Binance for 2 reasons. First, as we know coin offerings (BNB) in 2017, the SEC was offering BNB as a securities offering but according to Binance that BNB was an ICO. So no need to register as security. Second, in the money laundering case several groups Lazarus (North Korea) and Hydra (Russia) the SEC accused the two groups of money laundering on Binance. Because in my opinion, Exchange doesn't know about the money it got. They are just an exchange platform that doesn't monitor where the funds are coming from.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-06/us-probes-binance-over-token-that-is-now-world-s-fifth-largest

I didn't follow that much late, but the last time I checked the situation didn't look promising at all for the SEC, Ripple has a big chance to come out as a winner from this trial, doesn't it?

History says that Binance would run if there is any investigation against them by closing down the office in that country and move to other location and as long as there is safe heaven they will be doing this and unless you are willing to comply with the regulators you can run a business and SEC and other regulatory bodies will be behind every exchanges and they will be under scrutiny if they are not following the rules.

You just caught my attention now by saying this "  They are just an exchange platform that doesn't monitor where the funds are coming from."  If they can't get it right that way so what point is the need for kyc because kyc also helps in putting in know who is transacting via their exchange.

The SEC is pursuing unregistered and even fraudulent coin offerings, and it is part of a larger regulatory and legal crackdown aimed at direct abuse and fraud in the burgeoning digital currency industry.
The SEC may have regulatory authority over other types of tokens that resemble securities.
and for bitcoin, the SEC essentially recognizes that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies derived from mining without a presale are not securities, so the SEC has no regulatory authority over them.
and we'll see how it goes because everything is still gray as to what the real goal is.

Perhaps, what they did in our country is to send awareness to the public either on social media platforms or on television (news) in regards to crypto scams investment.
I was thinking their role was to protect against the rise of scams and stop the mindset of easy money and quick-rich schemes as this does not really exist in real life. However, I'd find this less effective rather than restricting the social media allowing this to publish because many were still falling into scams and Ponzi schemes.

If really as you have said that their role is to fight against scam projects and get rich quick schemes then what will you say about the bills they charge new promising projects which amounts in millions of dollars to be domicile with them. Don't you think it's discouraging. How in Earth will you describe this.

For me, SEC is one of the superb agencies in the government right now. Even though we all know Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are using blockchain technology that helps decentralization this agency is still there, inforcing such laws to protect the people.
In our country, there are a lot of scams some of them are using cryptocurrency as a front or using it as a product to lure poor people and scam them, but with the help of the SEC, some of them are being enforced so it's also good for everyone.

we can look at the positive side of having SEC as the entity that is restricting these scammers to deceive naive users. some are not happy with SEC's decisions but they are created to oversee if organizations are not liable to market manipulation. let's accept the fact that there are so many people that are so gullible about projects promising high profits.
they may be seen as the enemy, but it is better to have agency assisting people to know the possible impact of their financial decisions. some people are just blind when they hear that they can earn big money at short period of time but they forgot to consider the risks involve. and that's when SEC enters, educating the public about the possible repercussions of their financial decisions especially in the not-so-familiar market.

No doubt about that but I ask this question; the new start up with real use case sourcing for fund to support their project and sec  billing them a certain figure to be domicile with the. Does it not sound worrisome to you?