The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has evolved as one of the most significant in gathering over $1 billion in penalties from the cryptocurrency market and nad-based companies.
Recently, the SEC settled accusations against TrueCoin and TrustToken regarding fraudulent and unregistered sales of investment contracts involving the TrueUSD stablecoin.
The commission has filed a complaint against these companies in the District Court of Northern California; however, two of them agreed to settle the case as they don’t want to be heard by a judge.
The SEC filed a complaint in the District Court of Northern California, alleging that from November 2020 to April 2023, TrueCoin and TrustToken engaged in unregistered offers and sales of investment contracts through the crypto asset TUSD and profit-making opportunities on TrueFi.
The SEC also alleges that “TrueCoin and TrustToken falsely marketed the investment opportunity as safe and trustworthy by claiming that TUSD was fully backed by U.S. dollars or their equivalent, when in fact a substantial portion of the assets purportedly backing TUSD had been invested in a speculative and risky offshore investment fund to earn additional returns for the defendants.”
It is crucial to note that firms were aware they could have difficulties in TUSD redemption; as around 99% of funds in TUSD backing were invested in overseas funds, the commission notes.
SEC’s Surging Skepticism Troubling Crypto
Publicly available information states that the U.S SEC has collected over $7.50 billion in penalties from crypto and blockchain based companies; the most talked about settlement in crypto history is with TerraForm Labs for an amount of $4.78 billion.
Around 12 to 15 lawsuits have been filed by the SEC since the beginning of 2024, the commission filed approximately 30 complaints in 2023. The harsh and opposing actions by the commission have sparked fear and anger in the vast market and now seek for clarity with a transparent set of rules and regulations if required.
The anger against the SEC and its head Gary Gensler can be seen in the ongoing U. S elections, several reports claim that cryptocurrency has become 2nd highest contributing sector for the election, especially supporting candidates with a soft corner over digital currencies and other evolving by-products of blockchain.
A few weeks back OpenSea, a leading NFT marketplace, received a Wells notice from the SEC, noting that the NFTs sold over its platform are unregistered securities. The Howey Test always remains controversial, although the commission terms this test as a way to identify what are securities and what are currencies.
In a ruling, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) identified Bitcoin as a commodity, similar to gold and others. The recognition of BTC by the regulator has significantly backed the surged adoption of Bitcoin worldwide.
Crypto Market Price Updates
Over 56% of the market is dominated by Bitcoin followed by Ethereum and others; as of writing the cryptocurrency market capitalization was $2.27 trillion with a whopping surge of 2.51% in the past 24 hours.
When writing Bitcoin was trading at $64,541 with an addition of 2.37% to its trading price, and its market capitalization grew 2.43% reaching $1,273,552,141,925. BTC/USDT is the most traded pair of Bitcoin followed by BTC/FDUSD.
Dogwifhat (WIF) has beat expectations breaking the resistance of $2.00 in the past 24 hours. Its trading prices grew by over 17%, at the same time its trading volume surged by 109%, and its market cap by 17.87%.
