The former chairman of The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, warned of the coming of new Bitcoin (BTC) regulations and they would come both directly and indirectly. Clayton’s argument for the need of these regulations is the fact that BTC has been in the market for long enough and has not yet been classified as a security.
On March 31 he spoke on CBN’s Squawk Box and warned that just because BTC maintains the status of a non-security, this does not protect it from getting new regulations, which he insisted, would come soon.
"Where digital assets land at the end of the day–will be driven in part by regulation both domestic and international, and I expect that regulation will come in this area both directly and indirectly," says Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton on #bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/voWcgCFqOH
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) April 1, 2021
Squawk Box’s host, Andrew Ross Sorkin, claimed that when the SEC was under the chairmanship of Clayton, they never made any move on Bitcoin regulation. Clayton’s response to this was that even before he took up the position of being at the helm of the regulatory body, this digital asset was declared not to be a security.
From this interview, Clayton can be heard claiming that regulation will be part of what will be used to determine the direction digital assets take both in the domestic and international markets. He insists that the regulation will be both direct and indirect and may come from banks, taxation, security accounts, or similar approaches. The bottom line is that cryptocurrency’s regulatory environment is about to evolve.
Clayton has not fully retired from the industry since he parted ways with the SEC in December 2020. He is the current cryptocurrencies advisor at One River Asset Management. Even if Clayton claims to have no special insights on any new regulations that might have been formulated when he was the head of the SEC, he is sure that the regulatory environment needs revamping.
These remarks from Clayton coincide with the warnings billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio gave a week before claiming that the U.S. may ban Bitcoin on the spot, because they had done the same in the 1930s with gold.
It is interesting for Clayton to choose this specific time to comment about Bitcoin having the status of a non-security. This is because they coincide with the appeals made by Ripple to the SEC seeking documents from the government agency to help determine how exactly they made the conclusion that Ethereum and Bitcoin were not securities. Ripple Labs, and its backers have been arguing repeatedly that XRP is not a security. However, from the SEC’s view, it is markedly different because it is more centralized.
Image courtesy of pixabay
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