“We will not develop individual rules for cryptocurrencies”

Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Jay Clayton said that the regulator does not intend to make exceptions for cryptocurrencies and develop individual regulatory rules.

In conversation with Bloomberg
He said that he was not going to change the laws in the field of securities only to include or exclude crypto assets, but he also did not intend to impede the development of the industry.

“Many expect to see some changes to the rules on our part to add blockchain and cryptocurrencies to them. I initially made it clear that this would not happen, ”Clayton said.

Against the background of this statement, he also added that he does not position himself as an adversary of innovation or digital payments: “If there is an opportunity to reduce transaction costs at the international level, then I support this idea. But it’s worthwhile to understand that one cannot sacrifice the ideology of laws in the field of securities and other laws in order to implement it. ”

Clayton explained that he sees differences in digital currencies. For example, bitcoin, in his opinion, is not a security, but many other ICO entities should be regulated according to the law on securities. Among other things, he found that the white paper of many ICOs has certain problems and many repetitive motives, such as “time is running out” or “if you buy now, get 4 times more.” Such statements are an alarm to the regulatory authority.

Recall that last week, the SEC reported that the Russian rating agency ICO Rating agreed to pay $ 268,998 as a fine, as it revealed the fact of hiding information about payments that were received from token issuers in the “coverage of digital securities offerings.” The regulatory agency ruled that the startup violated the provisions of section 17 of the Securities Act of 1933.