The wheel turns... At the beginning of the year, maybe as close to a few months ago the SEC sued left and right companies from the crypto world. Many motivations were so wrong (even though they could possibly find better reasons), one could even ask oneself if they they just wanted to create panic, and not lead to real actionable results.
The interesting fact is that at first this tactics worked like a charm. The market was panicked every time the SEC opened another front against crypto, and many of their targets preferred to settle, making the SEC look well, since they made money without even going to court, and supposedly they stopped companies and people from breaking the Securities Law (often in their original interpretation).
But at some point, some said that enough and went to court with the SEC. Probably one of the first being Ripple. And that's where things started to turn against the SEC, big time.
It's a long series of lawsuits they lost either directly or indirectly, but very detrimental decisions against their tactics and which could be used as precedents.
Recently, we see a change in lawsuits strategy from the SEC, where they started to back off, meaning they didn't pursue further attack options at their disposal in the case against Greyscale, and now they dropped their charges against two of the Ripple top executives, to which the market reacts positively, as you can see:
Do they back off because they started to make a more serious analysis of each case instead of suing everyone and that made them realize they don't have much of a case? Is this the beginning of a change of stance for crypto under chair Gensler? Or is it a little bit of both?
I believe it's a little bit of both, but I guess we will know for sure when the decisions on Bitcoin spot ETF applications come in. Although it is possible they will be positive and the SEC will continue to go after other crypto businesses, and probably rightfully in some cases.
It's interesting. The longer they wait, they higher the pressure on them. At some point it was speculated the Gensler was Wall Street man and had the mission to either destroy crypto or deliver it to TradFi. If he was their man, why aren't these ETFs approved yet? A lot of hard to explain anomalies and inconsistencies in their behavior over time in relation to the crypto space.
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It's a good way to pick what interests you.