The SEC has ramped up its surveillance by hiring contractors who will run nodes for all of the major blockchains. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeks quotes from contractors to run Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Zcash, EOS, NEO and XRP Ledger.”
This is probably aimed at investigating the loopholes in the blockchain technology and trading. For SEC, however, to achieve their goal, Contractors will need to be able to add new blockchains whenever the SEC desires
What may be the reason behind SEC’s node move?
The reason as stated is “to support its efforts to monitor risk, improve compliance’s and inform commission policy with respect to digital assets.”
This news created mixed reactions as with some users thinking it’s a bullish sign of SEC acceptance and that the US Government won’t ban crypt while others see this as a bad sign
The question most people are asking. Will this improve data security?
The SEC thinks it can extract more information for analysis by running its own nodes directly.
The request from SEC specifically states “the subscription shall source all blockchain data from hosted nodes, rather than providing this data as a secondary source (e.g., via blockchain explorers).”
They also want direct access to other publicly available data which includes hashing algorithms, hashing power, mining difficulty and rewards, transactions quantity and size, coin supply and blockchain size.”
They want all the data from the genesis block onwards provided in a dump, with the info updated daily through a feed or API.
Analyzers review
Some analyzers say that this may mean going after your privacy and analyzing transactions. Hopefully centered more towards the privacy improvements from the bitcoin-dev side and maybe a renewed interest in Monero as well which has had poor ratings in regards to transparency.
Charles Lee (@guest1x) suggested it could actually be good for the integrity of blockchain networks such as XRP:
“One reason may be to identify and track down malicious nodes that are trying to negatively influence the consensus process.”
https://micky.com.au/why-does-the-sec-want-to-run-bitcoin-and-ethereum-nodes/
Investigators have already demonstrated they can analyze the blockchain and link transactions to individual users and this ability will only be enhanced with AI and Quantum computers.
What can trust nodes do?
Trustnodes suggested the blockchain monitoring might help lower the burden of compliance for new security tokens through automation. However, it’s not entirely clear at this point.
“So the American regulator might perhaps finally be moving a bit, but it’s not clear whether their focus is more on enforcement or on facilitation of capital formation.”
My reaction
I think that the Us lawmakers might have begun to realize they can not ban bitcoin or blockchain as a whole, Bitcoin since its creation has divided the people into its supporters and opponents.
The mixed feelings might, however, be the driving force to keep bitcoin going, and In fact, there are many out there who want it to be completely banned, especially the regulators and the critics of the cryptocurrency.
Recent Evidence shows that Bitcoin and blockchain has come to stay,
On Tuesday 30th July, there was a hearing on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency regulations held by the United States Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
Through this hearing, (R-ID) Mike Crapo, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, voiced his beliefs saying that the US wouldn’t be capable of banning Bitcoin successfully. Crapo said that if the US decided that they didn’t want crypto and tried banning it, he’s quite confident that they could not be successful in doing so given the global nature of the invention.
Considering all these points, it seems that extreme restrictions like imposing a ban might eventually end up making more people aware of cryptocurrency and the advantages it has to offer.
