Recently, Circle was issued a subpoena by the SEC. The fable of the scorpion and the toad applies here. No matter how much you cozy up to the feds, they'll stab you in the back in the end. Why? Because that's who they are.
Silly Circle. Don't they know that how you get things done in Washington is by dragging money through federal buildings to see whom can be bought? I guess they just haven't paid enough in fines...erm, I mean donated to the right people yet.
The SEC is out of control, pursuing its fantasies of widespread fraud when none exist. It has driven many small players out of the securities market by overregulating that market (full disclosure: I am related to someone who sold church bonds for many years).
You can guess what happened there-- the smaller players either were now forbidden to do business or couldn't bear the costs of the additional licensing, and so closed up shop. That left the big securities firms who were able to handle the regulatory burden owning the market. These big businesses then are able to pay off the regulators and buy the elected officials -- those who can be bought, anyways.
On another front, Congress is considering a law that would require every bank account with more than $600 in assets to be reported annually to the feds. The financial sector is not pleased, but whom do you think this hurts the most? Local, state, and regional banks -- the small fry. Who benefits? The big boys.
That's why the SEC is going after crypto companies -- not only to protect the big banks (and keep their donations flowing) but to scare up cash, ostensibly for budget purposes. However, SEC has been slow off the mark and so the targets are richer, more organized, and much more vocal. Hey Circle, if you want to win at this, either you get enough of the larger businesses on your side (like Ripple) or you pay off the feds.
What the feds are after is centralization of economy -- if companies can be kept big and small in number, they're easier for the feds to handle and to extort money from, for budget reasons, personal reasons, or campaign finance reasons. Politicians need money and that the current crew needs it more than most. After all, they're not getting it from US citizens, and Ukraine petered out a while ago.
The aggressive stance that Biden is taking against crypto generally has me suspicious. Has the SEC has metastasized from slush money for politicos in general to being another faucet for the Democrat party? Or is just "defend the banks" (erm donors) from those new-fangled crypto thingies?
