Congressional Blockchain Caucus Chair, Tom Emmer sent a strongly worded bipartisan letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) Chair Gary Gensler regarding the SEC’s information-seeking practices with respect to the crypto and blockchain industry.
The letter is signed by 7 fellow Congressional members.
Emmer states that the recent practices followed by the SEC are “in a manner inconsistent with the Commission’s standards for initiating investigations.”.
The letter mentions that it understands that the SEC can utilise Form 1662-which asks for company details and Form 2866-which lays out penalties for withholding said details of the Enforcement Manual of 2017 to “assess the merits of an investigation”.
Emmer, however, feels that in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), “federal agencies must be good stewards of the public’s time, and not overwhelm them with unnecessary or duplicative requests for information”.
The letter then goes on to ask 13 questions to the SEC Chair and asks for a response by 29 April.
The letter asks the SEC these questions with regards to all the voluntary documentation requests sent to individuals, project teams, entities, or the like regarding activities related to cryptocurrency, digital assets, or other uses of blockchain technology.
The questions surround the subject of voluntary documents requested by the SEC in the past five years, questions asked in each document request, and the average timeline has taken by a company to respond to such requests.
It also asks whether a company is informed of an informal investigation launched on it when such a request is sent.
The overall aim of this letter and these questions are to resolve the doubt of whether the current SEC practices are overburdensome, unnecessary and stifling innovation.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been on the edge of his seat for quite some time and feels the regulation of cryptocurrency is the need of the hour. He has also increased the scrutiny of NFTs to determine whether NFTs qualify as securities.
