UPDATED 13:15 EDT / JUNE 15 2023

BLOCKCHAIN

House testimony by crypto firm Prometheum CEO raises questions about regulation

Recent testimony in front of the U.S. House by cryptocurrency firm Prometheum Inc. Chief Executive Aaron Kaplan has created a stir regarding regulatory clarity for digital assets.

The House Financial Services Committee brought experts and insiders from the cryptocurrency community to speak about the industry about how to regulate digital assets on Tuesday focused on a pair of bills surrounding stablecoins and market structure.

Kaplan’s testimony differed from recent remarks of other cryptocurrency industry leaders in that he says current regulations are easy to abide by, arguing that regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission had clearly laid out frameworks.

Prometheum is an institutional exchange that is notable for its subsidiaries receiving first-of-its-kind approval to operate as a special-purpose broker-dealer from the Financial Regulatory Authority and registration with the SEC to operate as an alternative trading system for offering digital asset trading, clearing and settlement. The company was incorporated in 2021 and is expected to launch later this year.

These approvals came while the SEC sued Coinbase Inc., the largest domestic crypto exchange, alleging that the company was operating an unregistered exchange and violated U.S. securities laws. Commenting on the lawsuit, Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer and general counsel,said the SEC provided no “clear rules for the digital asset industry.” Grewal previously said that although Coinbase attempted to register with the SEC, it found it impossible to do so.

During prepared testimony, Kaplan said “there is a complaint path forward for crypto” and that the “SEC has clearly laid out” one for companies to follow. He also bashed companies, without naming names, that are unregulated as “reckless, unlawful platforms.”

He went on to add that participants in the industry who argue for new laws are simply “not willing to comply with existing applicable securities laws and regulations,” and that new legislation “is not in the best interest of the investing public or the blockchain industry.” Primarily because it would take years to draft that legislation.

His testimony did not go without criticism, however, as Representative Mike Flood asked if Prometheum offered bitcoin or Ethereum on its platform, which represents 68% of the $1 trillion crypto market cap, according to CoinMarketCap. Kaplan replied that it does not.

According to Flood, this reveals the platform’s shortcomings and its limited product offerings, in spite of regulatory approvals. Especially as the company has yet to decide what assets it intends to offer, although the website lists the tokens Flow, Filecoin, The Graph, Compound and Celo – but these are currently not yet tradable and are only hypothetical. Notably, several of these tokens are under examination by the SEC in the Coinbase lawsuit.

Furthermore, the platform would be providing products only to accredited investors, which Coy Garrison, former council to SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, argued showed an inconsistent market structure. This would be problematic for tokens with some sort of utility, or use, where end-users actually employ them to do something on networks – such as gaming tokens. If only institutional users or whales can buy them, and not-end users, this would provide those tokens no value.

Image: Pixabay

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