The American stock market policeman intends to regulate the “Wild West” of cryptocurrencies

Faced with cryptocurrencies, there is the brutal path, that of the prohibition of exchanges, taken by China. And there is that of regulation, undoubtedly more effective, in which the United States is engaged to regulate these electronic tokens like bitcoin or ethereum and to master this technological innovation which seems unstoppable.

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This was stated on Tuesday, August 3, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, the US stock market “gendarme”), Gary Gensler, before the Aspen Security Forum. “At present, investors are not sufficiently protected. Frankly, it looks more like the Wild West ”, accused Mr. Gensler. “This asset class is rife with frauds, scams and abuse in certain applications. There is a lot of hype about how crypto assets work. In many cases, investors are unable to obtain rigorous information. “

The embodiment of this “Wild West” is Elon Musk, who buys bitcoins through his company Tesla, then boosts their course by saying that he will accept this cryptocurrency to sell his cars, before changing his mind under pretext that said bitcoin consumes energy (and pollutes), causing the most famous virtual currency to yoyo. It is Elon Musk, always, who causes the rise of Dogecoin, an unknown cryptocurrency which geeks are keen on, and then affirms, in a television show, that it is a “scam”, resulting in its fall. .

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For the time being, Mr. Musk has not been prosecuted for price manipulation, as economist Nouriel Roubini accused him, in the winter of 2020. Notably because bitcoins are not indisputably securities like stocks or bonds. But he embodies the extreme confusion that reigns in this market, not to mention laundering or fraud operations, such as the one suffered by Colonial Pipeline, which transports stocks of gasoline to the East Coast of the United States and had to , in the spring of 2021, pay a ransom in bitcoins after a cyberattack.

Many scams

The sums at stake are considerable. According to Gary Gensler, cryptocurrencies have a total capitalization of 1,600 billion dollars (1,350 billion euros). The first seventy-seven cryptocurrencies exceed $ 1 billion in value. Mr. Gensler, who taught crypto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he is “Technology neutral” corn “Anything but neutral on public policy”. The boss of the SEC recalls some obvious facts: cryptocurrencies do not have the attributes of a currency, because they do not serve as a unit of account or as a safe haven. These are speculative vehicles, but citizens have the right to speculate, provided they are informed.

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