Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Crypto markets recovered a tad this week on news that U.S. inflation appears to have cooled off. General clamor continued on Twitter over the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown of the sector, in which the regulator filed two high-profile lawsuits against exchange titans Coinbase and Binance last week.
On Monday, Fox journalist Eleanor Terrett shared a transcription of remarks by SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who maintains that cryptocurrencies can be regulated under existing securities laws.
Many in the industry say Gensler is disingenuous for implying that it’s easy to register with the SEC. Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss says Gensler is full of hot air.
Monday kicked off a critical 36 hours for crypto, according to Web3 law expert MetaLawMan.
That morning, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) tweeted about a new SEC reform bill that he’d created with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN)—the pro-crypto House Majority Whip who has often blasted Gensler for driving the industry offshore through heavy handed enforcement actions.
U.S. regulators are getting stablecoins so wrong, tweeted venture capitalist and Bitcoin fan Nic Carter.
That day, Messari founder and CEO Ryan Selkis shared some incriminating footage of Gary Gensler.
On Tuesday, blockchain publishing protocol LBRY appeared to throw Ethereum under the bus.
Crypto researcher Molly White spent the morning fending off some incompetent Bitcoin maxis.
Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal vented his disappointment with the SEC’s intransigence during a recent courtroom skirmish in which the exchange appealed to the court to (again) ask the regulator to clarify its rules on crypto.
Former Twitter co-founder and now Block CEO Jack Dorsey believes Bitcoin has a place in Apple’s App Store.
By midweek heat was coming at the SEC from all angles. The Republicans of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services issued a sharp letter opposing the SEC’s proposal to amend the definition of “exchange.”
The Prometheum subplot
One of the strange subplots running through the news this week was the emergence of Prometheum, a company with obscure origins that few had ever heard about before, but that now has the ear of Congress, where it is apparently listened to as the voice of sensible [read: SEC–flattering] compliance. Venture capitalist Matt Walsh wrote a brilliant and lengthy thread covering the main points.
Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty thought he saw a Percy Bysshe Shelly reference in the name. However, the nineteenth century poem he refers to here is called Prometheus Unbound, and the mythic subtext he summarizes is actually from the Greek myth of Prometheus, the titan that stole fire from the gods to give to humanity.
Cameron Winkevoss’s twin and fellow Gemini co founder Tyler Winklevoss says that Prometheum offers a model for getting on Gensler’s good side.
