Is the US SEC’s iron fist coming? A summary of crypto market regulation rumors

On February 9, the cryptocurrency market plummeted in a short period of time, suspected to be affected by the news of US regulation. BlockBeats has summarized the current rumors about the US SEC regulation in the market. No policy has been implemented yet, but we still need to pay attention to risks.

This morning, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong tweeted that according to rumors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hopes to ban retail cryptocurrency staking in the United States.

Coincidentally, there were crypto KOLs who made similar comments before. Nic Carter, partner of Castle lsland Ventures, and Andrew, founder of crypto agency X3, said that the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) are taking joint actions to cut off the connection between the crypto industry and traditional banks. Among them, stablecoin issuers such as Paxos were told to voluntarily withdraw their bank license applications, otherwise the OCC will reject their applications before this Friday.

In addition, the SEC's regulation of crypto trading platforms seems to have entered a new phase. According to Bloomberg, the crypto trading platform Kraken is under investigation by the SEC to investigate whether it has violated certain regulations on providing unregistered securities to US investors. The investigation is in the late stages and a settlement may be announced in the next few days. It is not clear which tokens or products are under review.

Binance, as the industry leader, seems to have also smelled the wind. On February 7, Binance issued an announcement stating that it would suspend all US dollar interbank transfers starting February 8, but cryptocurrency transactions and US dollar deposits and withdrawals on Binance.US would not be affected.

On February 9, according to people familiar with the matter, Binance is forming an alliance of crypto companies to play an active role in the upcoming regulations. Many companies in the crypto field have signed up to join, including project teams, trading platforms, and blockchain analysis companies. People familiar with the matter said that the alliance will not be operated by Binance, but "will be run in a decentralized manner as much as possible in many different projects to ensure consistency with the community." The person familiar with the matter also said that its initial goal is to cooperate with global regulators and demonstrate the industry's advancement in combating criminals, while "also to ensure that there is a mechanism to point out shortcomings and bad behavior in the industry and help avoid the spread of larger problems."

After the liquidation in 2022, the crypto industry seems to be warming up at the start of 2023. I wonder where such regulatory information will lead the market.