The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) sanctions efforts are being questioned by Congress, and a congressman cryptocurrency and altcoin It is fighting for more legal action against its stock exchanges.
A subcommittee of Congress held an audit hearing on Tuesday focused on the SEC’s executive division, which included testimony from division director Gurbir Grewal.
At the center of the reps’ questions was the SEC’s role in the cryptocurrency markets.
“Since You Have Decided That Ripple’s (XRP) Altcoin Is a Securities, Why Didn’t You Go After The Sellers Of This Token”
“The department faces new challenges when it comes to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets,” said Brad Sherman, a Democratic member who chaired the subcommittee.
The congressman noted that the commission approved his lawsuit against Ripple over the XRP token, but pressed Grewal as to why he did not follow exchanges that trade on XRP.
Sherman said in his statement:
“The SEC decided that XRP was a security and went after XRP, but did not go after exchanges where tens of thousands of illegal securities transactions took place, for reasons I’ll raise in the questions.
You know it’s a security. This means that they are operating a stock exchange illegally. If they know it’s illegal, if you do, and if I do, I hope you focus on it.”
The SEC started its lawsuit against Ripple at the end of 2020. This issue is still on the court’s agenda, and there has been months of debate over internal memos that took place before the SEC ruled that some other tokens, notably Ethereum, were not securities.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has argued that crypto exchanges should register as stock exchanges with the commission, but this view has found limited support.
*Not investment advice.