The chief executive officer of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a stern warning to cryptocurrency scammers and praised the agency's global cooperation with other regulators.
"We Look at Content, Not Labels in Cryptocurrency Projects"
Gurbir Grewal, who joined the SEC in July 2021, spoke at the Securities Enforcement Forum on Friday about the recent cryptocurrency lawsuits filed by the SEC. He said the agency is not interested in the tags crypto projects use, but in the content of the services they offer.
“We don't care about tags. We deal with services, tags don't matter to us,” Grewal said.
“We are not concerned with labels. We are interested in offers, labels are not important to us. What matters is technology. What's under the hood, because when we looked under the hood, kicking the tires, we saw a lot of DeFi decentralized finance products that are neither decentralized nor finance, just plain scams.”
Grewal also dismissed the notion that the SEC has increased its sanctions against crypto projects in response to the market downturn. He said the organization was consistent in its approach and that the increase in risk caused the organization to intensify its work:
"I think what you're seeing is the crypto markets in a downturn, the increase in risk forced us to focus our efforts here. Maybe it was perceived as a trend increase but I think it's just about doing our job as we've been doing for the past few years."
Grewal also highlighted the SEC's jurisdiction over crypto-related activities involving US investors or markets, regardless of where they are located or operate. He said the agency has tremendous collaboration with other regulators around the world and will use all available tools to gather evidence and track down malicious individuals.
*Not investment advice.