> The SEC alleges that Kraken “commingled” its own funds with its clients’. This is a similar allegation already made of other crypto trading platforms. The SEC cannot and does not allege that any customer funds are missing, or any loss has occurred. Nor does it allege that any loss will occur. *The complaint itself concedes that this so-called “commingling” is no more than Kraken spending fees it has already earned.*
> The complaint against Kraken alleges no fraud, no market manipulation, no customer losses due to hacking or compromised security, and no breaches of fiduciary duty. It includes big dollar amounts but does not allege a single one of those dollars is missing or misused – no ponzi scheme, no failure to maintain adequate reserves, and no failure to preserve the identity of client funds 1:1. Indeed, none of these things would be true.
> Instead, the complaint makes a technical argument: that Kraken’s business requires special securities licenses to operate because the digital assets we support are really “investment contracts.” This is incorrect as a matter of law, false as a matter of fact, and disastrous as a matter of policy.
...
> The SEC already tried this theory and a court rejected it outright. The SEC argued in that case that digital assets bought and sold on trading platforms were really securities transactions. The Federal Court for the Southern District of New York disagreed, ruling that the SEC failed entirely to satisfy the relevant legal test. The court held that the SEC’s unprecedented legal theory was contrary to the “economic reality” of such transactions. The SEC’s case against Kraken will fail, too, and for the same reasons.
> The SEC alleges that Kraken “commingled” its own funds with its clients’. This is a similar allegation already made of other crypto trading platforms. The SEC cannot and does not allege that any customer funds are missing, or any loss has occurred. Nor does it allege that any loss will occur. The complaint itself concedes that this so-called “commingling” is no more than Kraken spending fees it has already earned.
> The SEC famously argues that digital asset trading platforms like Kraken can simply “come in and register” with the agency. As most securities law experts know, there is not a single law on the books supporting this position. The SEC has promulgated no rule describing how an order in a digital asset should be matched, no guidance on how a trade should be cleared, and articulated no standards for how to broker a digital asset transaction. The allegation is hollow; there is no such thing as an exchange, broker dealer, or clearing agency for investment contracts. The SEC is demanding compliance with a regime that doesn’t exist.
> Meanwhile, groups of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have questioned what they call SEC’s “regulation via enforcement” approach. They have asked why the agency’s actions against crypto firms seem less focused on “compliance and customer protection,” but were instead “calculated for maximum publicity and political impact.” Others have observed that the SEC’s strategy “does not protect the public.” Indeed, this suit does nothing to protect the public. Like those in complaints that have come before, its allegations are factually incorrect, contrary to law, and the wrong way to create policy in the United States.
To me the SEC and Gary Gensler are going to get their arses handed to themselves once again.
> “calculated for maximum publicity and political impact.”
I'm not a fan of crypto currency, but a big part of my dislike for it is how difficult it is to actually use it. I don't mean technically though. I mean legally.
In Canada, all crypto transactions are considered taxable events. Did you sell a couch on Facebook Marketplace using Bitcoin? Time to calculate your capital gain or loss from a vaguely worded set of guidelines.
It's all political IMO. The real value in crypto is having a currency that isn't subjected to the whims of governments and the people that control monetary policy alongside the massive payment networks like Visa and MasterCard. Controlling the flow of money allows pseudo bans on things the people that control those systems don't like.
My hot take on the whole thing is that half the goal is to make it well known that all the remaining exchanges perform strict KYC and that crypto transactions are trivially easy to track while being extra complicated to report on your taxes (at least in Canada). Once that's done crypto currency doesn't have much value to anyone.
> In Canada, all crypto transactions are considered taxable events. Did you sell a couch on Facebook Marketplace using Bitcoin? Time to calculate your capital gain or loss from a vaguely worded set of guidelines.
Even if it were a real honest-to-god currency it would be the same though, right? That's how it works here in Japan at least - buy a couch in dollars, now you have to calculate capital gains against your average cost basis for dollars (which I guess includes every dollar you earned in your whole working life, if you lived in Canada before you moved here?)
No, transactions in national currencies are exempt if under a reasonable cap. So you don't have to separately declare every time you bought Starbucks overseas or whatever.
It sounds wonderful when the biggest worry you have about money is how to file your taxes. If that were true for most people on this planet bitcoin would probably not be needed.
> It's all political IMO. The real value in crypto is having a currency that isn't subjected to the whims of governments and the people that control monetary policy alongside the massive payment networks like Visa and MasterCard. Controlling the flow of money allows pseudo bans on things the people that control those systems don't like.
What a surprise that the government isn't about to make it convenient to evade its authority.
> Once that's done crypto currency doesn't have much value to anyone.
It already doesn't. The lofty early promises have long fallen flat and all that is left is a game of hot potato. It's not utility, it's just a lottery, which economically speaking is negative utility.
> The real value in crypto is having a currency that isn't subjected to the whims of governments and the people that control monetary policy alongside the massive payment networks like Visa and MasterCard. Controlling the flow of money allows pseudo bans on things the people that control those systems don't like.
Would you say the same is true of arms trafficking or contraband in general? Personally, I can't think of a reason why a society wouldn't want to control who and what goes into and out of its territory.
This is not true. There are State and Federal restrictions on mass layoffs, which generally require a few months of notice. Giving severance is understood to count as notice. In any case you'd get the money, and you probably wouldn't be useful anyways.
> 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space.
Most employees at Kraken don't know what the CTO looks like. He never turns the camera on during meetings and as far as I'm aware hasn't showed up to the in person events. He wrote most of the legacy backend.
This was mostly a curiosity though. None of the other points apply to him. He was professional.
> 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that.
I know a guy who went to a crypto hackathon (which is a chance for devs and start ups to show off for VCs.). He said a disturbing number of VCs, mostly creepy old guys who got rich off crypto, showed up with obvious asian/eastern European prostitutes or sugar babies.
> Most employees at Kraken don't know what the CTO looks like. He never turns the camera on during meetings and as far as I'm aware hasn't showed up to the in person events. He wrote most of the legacy backend.
> This was mostly a curiosity though. None of the other points apply to him. He was professional.
Call me "old school" but the CTO of a company valued at > $10B that manages who-knows-how-much in terms of customer assets shouldn't be able to do this. Frankly, it's ridiculous - can you imagine the CTO of Bank of America being an avatar/unknown? Seriously. Where is an adult to say "turn your camera on, show up to stuff, use your real name, or you're out"?!?!
Regarding the "sugar babies" and what-not - yes. Just another data point that demonstrates how ridiculously shady and so far beyond acceptable behavior, practice, and standards the space is.
Binance can create its own volume out of thin air. This would be harder for Coinbase, due to their nature as a public company. The truth is, it's hard to know what is happening inside Binance.
That's true, but that's easy to track, as everything in the blockchain is transparent, that's how people found out about the insider trading at Coinbase
Exchanges aren't banks and shouldn't act like banks. Banks are allowed to take deposits and lend then out, ie they don't need 100% reserves. Exchanges should be required to hold at least 100% reserves.
FTX collapsed, in part, because they weren't maintaining reserves. Instead they gambled with customer money.
All crypto exchanges are banks, and shouldn't be called exchanges
Exchanges should be required to hold 100% reserves in the deposit currencies of their users if they want to be called exchanges, but that would require regulations to be enforced that don't even exist yetm
> FTX collapsed, in part, because they were acting like banks by lending out the funds they were entrusted with and leveraging them
This had basically nothing to do with how FTX collapsed. It collapsed because they stole the money. They may have papered up the theft as a loan to Alameda. But that wasn't done consistently, and was ad hoc rationalization of plain-vanilla theft.
That's fair, the loans were a figleaf for theft. But in their minds they may have thought that they'd pay it all back and nobody would notice. People that steal are pretty weird when it comes to rationalizing what they are doing. I've had a bunch of people steal 100's of thousands from a gas station I owned. They would take it to the casino, bet heavily, lose everything and then do it again all in the hope that they would win, pocket the winnings and then put back the original amount. Still bugs me 16 years later.
This wasn't just a cut to sales or support staff. 30% of engineering was layed off. I would say QA/QE was decimated, but I'm not sure if anyone was left.
