The founder of blockchain platform Cardano has shared his thoughts on the Biden administration's regulatory approach toward the cryptocurrency industry, saying the statement released by the president's office regarding a highly controversial Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) bulletin was "noise and garbage."
The administration's statement in question was released Wednesday, hours before House representatives voted in favor of a resolution that revokes the SEC's Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121) that requires crypto custodial firms to hold their clients' assets on their balance sheets.
The statement said it "strongly opposes" the resolution's passage as it would limit the regulatory agency's efforts in protecting crypto investors. "If the President were presented with H.J. Res. 109, he would veto it," the statement concluded.
The contents of the statement were "just a bunch of noise and garbage," said Charles Hoskinson, who is also a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain. He pointed out how it was "absurd" that the administration under the president "carelessly" said that he will veto a resolution put together by lawmakers who spoke with "everybody" and collected proposals to come up with ways to move the crypto sector forward.
Biden and Crypto https://t.co/P06encxBEv
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 8, 2024
Hoskinson's nearly 15-minute-long discussion of the administration's latest move garnered a lot of attention from observers on X (formerly Twitter). One user said the leaders before Biden weren't really open to digital assets either, "and there were already a lot of problems regarding legislation and regulation back then."
The crypto magnate responded, saying the former administration under ex-President Donald Trump did have its issues "but mostly ignored our industry." In comparison, Hoskinson said Biden's government "has engaged in a coordinated effort to kill crypto."
By "coordinated effort," Hoskinson may be referring to the SEC's increased enforcement against multiple crypto firms in recent years – the latest being a slew of Wells Notices served to some of the industry's most prominent companies, such as Robinhood and Uniswap.
Earlier this week, Robinhood revealed that it received a Wells Notice from the Wall Street regulator over the operations of its crypto arm, Robinhood Crypto. The digital assets community immediately stood up for the fintech behemoth, with a prominent lawyer saying it appears the SEC was abusing the Wells process.
Outside the SEC, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has also been quite active in its crypto crackdown. Its latest legal action was taken against privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet and mixing service Samourai Wallet and its developers for allegedly facilitating billions in "unlawful transactions."
Commenting on the DOJ's "hyper-aggressive argument" regarding non-custodial software, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said the Biden administration was "criminalizing core tenants of the Bitcoin network" and the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem."
