Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat, wants the House Financial Services Committee to hold a hearing with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins after the agency decided not to pursue cases against Coinbase, Binance, and other crypto firms. In a letter to French Hill, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters on Sunday wrote that a hearing was long overdue and pointed to “questionable policy changes” at the Commission as her reason for that.
Waters Demands Accountability
“Chair Gensler testified before the Committee twice during his first year,” she wrote. “Although having a clear duty to supervise the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Committee has not held any hearing with Chairman Atkins, despite the SEC’s quick, large, and questionable policy changes during the Trump Administration.” Waters enumerated 10 points that she believed the oversight hearing should address, including the dropping of crypto enforcement actions, the Commission’s independence and politicization, and the deterioration of market surveillance.
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“Questionable Policy Changes” Raise Concerns
She alleged that they “has terminated or stayed major enforcement actions against multiple crypto companies and individuals that had been credibly accused of major violations of our securities laws, including Coinbase, Binance, and Justin Sun,” and she added: “Some of the defendants in these cases had even announced that they had terminated enforcement actions before the Commission had actually taken the vote.” Waters argued that the FSC should examine the agency closely if it is to understand “how it plans to deter fraud and manipulation.
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SEC’s Crypto Shift
Waters wrote a letter to French Hill, a Trump administration appointee, who became the new chair after Gary Gensler in April. During his time, the SEC has been more crypto-friendly, with the dropping of lawsuits and investigations, easing of rules for crypto exchange-traded funds, and a positive attitude towards crypto regulation via Project Crypto. It is only a fraction of the time when Waters has denounced the crypto industry and the Republican Party’s stance towards it. In October, she voiced her indignation at the pardon of Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao.
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