The point is that regulation could have made Bitcoin and NFTs never cause the harm they have inflicted and will inflict, but the political will is not there.
The SEC was decently anti-crypto for quite a while, basically until Trump 2. It was following an established strategy of going after the worst actors to establish case law to underpin rulemaking that would therefore be less vulnerable in court once made. In finance you can assume defendants will be well-funded so it's not the dumbest strategy.
It of course made nobody happy -- the anti-crypto crowd thought it was nowhere near aggressive enough, while everyone in crypto was crying a river about the "unfair" and "corrupt" SEC "doing Wall Street's bidding" by making things hard for pump-and-dumpers.
Meanwhile, in marked contrast, Bitcoin itself was more or less given a clean bill of health as long ago as 2012, when FINCEN ruled that miners were not money-transmitters. Say what you want about bitcoin, but it's not transparently a security like pretty much every NFT and most leading altcoins.
Anyway that's all ancient history now since Trump 2, although Gensler had already more or less lost once the Bitcoin ETF was approved. Tradfi seems to love crypto now, what could possibly go wrong?
The SEC was decently anti-crypto for quite a while, basically until Trump 2. It was following an established strategy of going after the worst actors to establish case law to underpin rulemaking that would therefore be less vulnerable in court once made. In finance you can assume defendants will be well-funded so it's not the dumbest strategy.
It of course made nobody happy -- the anti-crypto crowd thought it was nowhere near aggressive enough, while everyone in crypto was crying a river about the "unfair" and "corrupt" SEC "doing Wall Street's bidding" by making things hard for pump-and-dumpers.
Meanwhile, in marked contrast, Bitcoin itself was more or less given a clean bill of health as long ago as 2012, when FINCEN ruled that miners were not money-transmitters. Say what you want about bitcoin, but it's not transparently a security like pretty much every NFT and most leading altcoins.
Anyway that's all ancient history now since Trump 2, although Gensler had already more or less lost once the Bitcoin ETF was approved. Tradfi seems to love crypto now, what could possibly go wrong?