Continuing his tirade against the US regulator, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban blasted the SEC, saying that they could take a cue from Japan on how to protect crypto investors. Following the infamous Mt. Gox incident, Japan implemented measures to protect investors. These exchanges that went bankrupt in the US survived in Japan, Cuban wrote.
If the SEC would follow Japan’s lead the fraud would be reduced significantly. And as a point of reference, the amount of fraud in bulletin board stocks rivals that of today’s crypto. The SEC will let you trade billions of shares of bankrupt companies that have announced they their shares will never have value. This is an institutional failure of the SEC, not a crypto issue. If the regulator has instituted audited collateral and segregation of funds requirements , we would not have seen FTX and others fail.
The billionaire investor was also engaged in a verbal duel with John Reed Stark, an ex-official of the Securities and Exchange Commission while debating about the regulation of cryptocurrencies. The heated debate on Crypto Twitter gained attention when Cuban accused SEC Chair Gary Gensler of undermining the crypto industry, and Stark, on the other hand, defended the regulator’s actions.
Cuban ended the discussion by advocating his support for cryptocurrencies, stating that their potential impact on the broader economy cannot be underestimated. He famously coined the term “Crypto Derangement Syndrome” to refer to an irrational hatred of cryptocurrencies and suggested that such negativity can be as detrimental as the exaggerated hype surrounding its potential.
SEC On Ethereum
Of late, Gensler has come under intense criticism after House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry came forward with serious allegations. This followed recent controversies surrounding the US regulator, including a federal judge rebuking the regulator for “gross abuse” of power. Adding fuel to the fire were the unredacted filings from Ethereum firm ConsenSys, revealing that Gensler believed ETH was a security for at least a year.
However, McHenry highlighted more shocking revelations, stating that evidence showed Chair Gensler intentionally misled both Congress and the public during a testimony last April. Citing new court filings, Gensler evaded clear answers about Ethereum’s classification as a security, a move McHenry now claims was a deliberate obscuring of the regulator’s position.