According to David Hirsch, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, more enforcement actions could be coming toward cryptocurrency exchanges and decentralized finance projects.
Hirsch said the agency could file new charges against crypto brokers, dealers, exchanges, clearing agencies and others who fail to make proper disclosures or register with the agency, according to a report by Coin Bureau. Hirsch spoke Tuesday at the Securities Enforcement Forum Central in Chicago.
Hirsch said the SEC was aware of and investigating companies involved in similar activities to those that sparked lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance a few months ago.
DeFi could also come into the spotlight, according to CoinDesk.
Moving through the courts
The SEC has made progress in filing high-profile cases against crypto exchange Binance and then Coinbase a day later in June. It has also been involved in a long-standing dispute with Ripple Labs.
The agency also recently brought two fallen against NFT projects.
Some companies, including Grayscale Investments and Ripple, have fought back, with three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit pronunciation in August that the SEC should reassess Grayscale’s bid for a spot bitcoin ETF after the asset manager sued the agency last year following the rejection of the conversion of its flagship GBTC fund.
The case involving Ripple ended in a mixed verdict. The judge there ruled in July that some of Ripple’s sales, called programmatic, of XRP did not violate securities laws due to a blind bidding process in place for them. She also ruled that other direct sales of the token to institutional investors were securities, leaving a partial victory for the SEC.