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George Nethercutt, known as a former Republican representative in the United States government, has recently told the political site The Hill that the approach of the country’s regulators could basically create problems for the crypto industry in the U. S.
The former politician represented the state of Washington in the Congress during 1995 to 2005 and how he’s in the private sector, being the founder of two companies, George Nethercutt Consulting LLC and a nonprofit called Nethercutt Civics Foundation, too.
According to him, there is a certain contrast between the steps being taken by the politicians to foster innovation and the ones being taken for the regulators, which he dislikes. This “stark contrast” was described as the government trying to pave the way for innovation while regulators like the U. S. Securities Exchange Commision (SEC) are not doing their best.
The Problem With The SEC
Nethercutt accuses the SEC of being too slow to promote rules regarding cryptos and believes that innovation is the aspect that gets left out when this happens.
The main problem, as he sees, is that this is capable of leaving many Americans in a regulatory limbo when they deal with the crypto world and they remain unsure whether their tokens are securities or utilities.
During his interview, the SEC was generally blamed as the main problem for the industry. The reason? Because the ex-politician does not believe that laws from the 1930's are a good way to define cryptos. As the laws have been established for almost 90 years now, he may have a point. However, the SEC is adamant on using the Securities Laws to define cryptos and to try to regulate them. Because of this, it is creating no new laws.
Overlapping Of Responsibilities
One of the other main problems that the ex-Republican found, that there is a considerable overlapping between different regulators with different ideas of how things should be done, which can be quite bothersome.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the SEC have very different approaches on how to deal with cryptos. In fact, Nethercutt seems to prefer the way that the CFTC is dealing with things as he believes that a “divorce” between securities and cryptos is the most important act that the regulators should do right now.
According to him, from a legal perspective, securities regulations do not apply to cryptos, at least that is what the experts believe. In fact, even the SEC believes that neither Bitcoin (BTC) nor Ethereum (ETH) are securities. Policymakers should take that road and allow innovation to flourish, in his opinion.
The whole debate is very heated but complex. While the Securities Laws are old and cryptos are new, there is a strong debate on whether the definition of securities will protect investors or not. Many tokens created by Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), for instance, have many qualities that could be attributed to securities. It looks like the debate will still go on for a long time.
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