So there's this potentially baseless rumor going around that Gary Gensler shorted Bitcoin and other crypto assets for $2.5M just a few days before the regulatory shitstorm that came down the pike. Of course we all know these guys insider trade, and it's a basically a 100% guarantee that someone got the jump on the market before it was so obviously attacked... but also for it to be the chairman of the SEC and for there to be actual evidence of it? Wow that's another matter entirely.
The SEC is losing a ton of credibility from their actions over the past months and beyond, and something like this would really just be the icing on the cake that brings it all together. It's par for the course at this point to call everyone a "scammer and a huckster" when the person announcing such things is playing the exact same game. The hypocrisy is real.
At this point it's quite hard to imagine the SEC winning all their high profile cases. Sure it was pretty easy to imagine them beating Ripple no matter how good Ripple's case seems to be on a legal level. However, beating Binance seems like a bit of a stretch and a lot of that evidence has the appearance of being quite circumstantial. Also Binance.US could be completely annihilated and Binance Global would still be the top exchange in the world by volume.
And then there's Coinbase.
Suing the one exchange that has done everything in their power to follow the rules and comply while bending over backwards? And to do it the day after officially pressing charges against Binance? It's so comically obvious that Gensler is full of shit when he says he's just doing his job to "protect investors". You don't purposefully create a shitstorm of panic by dumping all the litigation back to back to back to "protect investors" for some shit that may or may not of happened in 2019.
The talking points of the SEC have been completely undermined by Gensler.
Of course on a political level not everyone realizes this. That's the name of the politics game, and these people are good at it. Look no farther than Justin Sun in this regard. The kid could openly murder someone in cold blood and still convince some niche group that it was totally justified and the right thing to do. The ability to manipulate the polarity of the political sphere and get people to fight against each other instead of the powers that be is a mastered craft in socio-economics. Or perhaps sociopathic-economics. One of those.
So if it is quite proven that Gensler did indeed insider trade this little stunt of his. Ha. Wow. That's just about the worst thing that can happen for the SEC's credibility. There's no weaseling your way out of that one, as it runs contrary and hypocritical to every single statement the SEC makes.
On the crypto side of this whole thing the market has always and will always knee-jerk overreact. BNB is down 21% in a week. Is that justified? Is the market correctly pricing this in? The answer is no, because the market never prices these things in on the correct timescale. Just look how long the Ripple lawsuit lasted... oh wait it's still going and it just keeps getting delayed over and over and over again. What is the cause of such delay?
Reason to stall.
These cases will inevitably be delayed time and time again for a very simple reason: crypto can not be compared to legacy assets and the SEC refuses to do their actual job and provide regulatory clarity. The SEC knows what crypto is, which is exactly why they can't provide such clarity, but that doesn't stop them from trying to regulate something that they know is beyond their jurisdiction.
Like most government agencies: they'd like to have their cake and eat it too. Why provide regulatory clarity on something like crypto when you can just not and hold all the power and regulate by enforcement. By providing clarity, not only does the SEC lose power, but they also allow crypto to actually start building a stable base and then loophole around all the laws that are in place. This is quite easy for crypto to do because it is by definition programmable smart money. Can't have that! The SEC will continue to regulate by enforcement until they lose high-profile cases and are essentially forced by judges to pull their act together.
We also have to wonder if the real goal of the SEC is simply to "justifiably" siphon as much money from crypto as they possibly can into their own pockets. This is capitalism after all. These systems follow the money, and crypto is the most advanced form of money their is. Of course just because it is "advanced" doesn't mean that it's actually "good". The only assets that I for sure know are good at this point are Bitcoin & Hive, and there are thousands upon thousands of cryptocurrencies. The math doesn't look so good on that front, but these things understandably take time.
And then we have to wonder who is pulling the SEC's strings.
Obviously someone like Gensler acts like the big boss but truly the dude is quite small potatoes. In fact have you ever Googled how it works? Spoiler alert!
The SEC is an independent federal agency, established pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, headed by a five-member Commission. The Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The President designates one of the Commissioners as the Chair.
LoL... yeah...
Look at that... All five members of the SEC commission are appointed by the president, and the chairman is decided by the president. The only power congress even has in the matter is they can refuse to "confirm" them, which is basically next to no power because the president can always find some bootlicker to do their bidding that will get confirmed.
If that's not a conflict of interest, I don't know what is.
Normally it wouldn't be a conflict of interest because the SEC is supposed to regulate securities. The chance for corruption and unfairness within the legacy system is not so bad in this case even though it still happens from time to time. We would hope that all publicly traded companies and whoever else creating actual securities would be treated fairly and universally throughout the legacy system.
But as I've pointed out time and time again with the light legal research that I've done, crypto is not a security. Even the most dogshit unfair scam coins are not securities. Intellectual property does not exist in crypto. The government has no say in the matter. All the rules are different, and most importantly crypto itself stands in direct opposition to the current bloated establishment we know and love.
These factors and more create an environment where of course the SEC would unfairly target all platforms and attack anything and everything crypto no matter how hard we tried to stay in compliance. It makes perfect sense, and I'm quite disappointed to report that recently Nigeria has declared Binance's P2P trading as illegal within the country. Again, it's not a surprise, it was completely expected, but it's also obviously wrong action enforced by thugs trying to control things they shouldn't be trying to control. Welcome to imperialism, fam.
Conclusion
The rumor that Gensler insider traded this move is honestly pretty funny. It might not be true, but it's exactly what people wanted to hear. Everyone knows the system is corrupt to the core, and the actions of regulatory agencies proves this without fail time and time again. It doesn't matter if he insider traded or not, as we know such actions are fully within the wheelhouse of government and have become the standard. Politicians are practically expected to flex their power for their own benefit. This is not a new thing and has been around since the beginning of society itself.
As many see this as a reason to panic I see it much more as the beginning of the end for agencies like the SEC. Moves like this are bound to end in high-profile losses that cripple the reputation and credibility of the agency, but more importantly it will force crypto to adapt to this hostile environment and become even more grizzled and adversarial to the established way of doing business. That's a good thing; it just won't be very fun as it's happening to us. We can all laugh about it ten years down the road over a beer though. At some point all drama like this just becomes water under the bridge we were forced to build. Cheers.