The Consensys case exposes the fundamental mismatch between blockchain tech and securities law.
The SEC claims MetaMask Swaps 'effects transactions in securities,' but can a smart contract be a broker?
This isn't just about Consensys; it's about whether the '34 Act's definition of a broker can encompass code without breaking the entire DeFi ecosystem.
Congress's silence forces courts to decide if 'protecting investors' requires stifling the very innovation that could democratize finance.
It took longer than it should have, but I am extremely glad that the SEC is going after a lot of these crypto companies.
I fell for the Gemini Earn scam like a lot of people did because the 7+% interest on GUSD was extremely enticing and Gemini did some kind of weaselly language to loosely imply that the investments were FDIC backed. Obviously it sucks to be a victim of this stuff, but I did eventually get my GUSD back a few weeks ago after a bit more than 1.5 years in limbo (which I very promptly cashed out and converted back into USD), and I think that's in no small part because of the SEC lawsuit against Gemini.
I suspect there are many, many more to come. I feel a lot of these crypto companies are playing fast and loose with vague language and have been able to make promises that would be illegal under traditional banking and securities law.
This seems much different than what Gemini Earn did. Having smart contracts enable swaps is very different from taking people's money and lending it our through micro lending.
I was also interested in Gemini Earn until I read the terms and decided it was almost a guaranteed way to lose all of my money.
> This seems much different than what Gemini Earn did. Having smart contracts enable swaps is very different from taking people's money and lending it our through micro lending.
I agree it's not 1 to 1, it's a different thing, I was just saying that it does seem like the SEC is taking these crypto company shenanigans much more seriously now, and I'm really grateful for it. It would have been better five or six years ago, but I'll take the small victories where I can get them. Even if Gemini Earn wasn't quite as bad as Metamask, it was still bad to make misleading promises about safety of your investment.
I accept my share of the responsibility for not reading the terms thoroughly enough, and for not being more skeptical of 7% interest when banks were only offering like 0.5%. It was short sighted of me, I guess I got caught up in the crypto hype like a lot of people did, and I do think Gemini should be held accountable for a bit of the misleading marketing they did.
> I was also interested in Gemini Earn until I read the terms and decided it was almost a guaranteed way to lose all of my money.
As I said, credit to the SEC because I did get all of it back (though I would have much rather gotten it back early because it of course lost value in limbo due to inflation and not being investable in the market).
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I was thinking about how a generally pretty skeptical person like me got caught up in this; I don't gamble and I've never fallen for an MLM and I don't play the lottery, and I think I figured it out.
Whether accidental or not, cryptocurrency was able to launder its reputation through academics. Blockchain is academically interesting and as such a lot of academics got caught into it too, and I guess I put more trust into them than I should. Seeing Philip Wadler working for IOHK made me think that it was a better investment than it should have been.
I forgot that academics are still regular humans and aren't immune to hype trains either.
MetaMask is nothing at all like Gemini. Gemini was effectively a bank. MetaMask is software you run on your own computer, and use to effects peer-to-peer transfer and swaps with others. The SEC case is an attempt to extend SEC authority to software publishers, and only portends harm to retail investors, who will have less software innovation to benefit from if the SEC succeeds.
The SEC is supposed to regulate investment contracts, not currency, and definitely not software publishing.
Giving bureaucracies unlimited control to do what we want on our computers is incredibly dangerous imo. We should always be careful about what activity we permit them to restrict.
Maybe I am missing something but it feels like massive overreach from SEC. Wouldn't this make basically any software / front-end that performs token swaps via smart contract interactions illegal in the eyes of SEC? Or is the key issue the fact that Consensys has profited from it by having additional fees?
The SEC claims MetaMask Swaps 'effects transactions in securities,' but can a smart contract be a broker?
This isn't just about Consensys; it's about whether the '34 Act's definition of a broker can encompass code without breaking the entire DeFi ecosystem.
Congress's silence forces courts to decide if 'protecting investors' requires stifling the very innovation that could democratize finance.