Austin Campbell, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is creating barriers for the American public to receive adequate disclosures from crypto companies. Campbell shared his statement in a June 25 post on X in response to a statement from SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
"The great irony here is that the largest barrier to American investors receiving this disclosure is the SEC itself," said Campbell. "Had the SEC made sensible rules starting in 2018 instead of going scorched earth to regulate internet technology using legislation from before the public had televisions (much less the internet) verbatim, we'd be in a much better place. The agency charged with investor protection is itself the thing blocking investor protection. I wonder what could be motivating this behavior, given it is transparently not investor protection?"
Gensler said in a June 25 interview with Bloomberg that there are "fifteen to twenty thousand various" crypto tokens, and the "American public is not getting the proper disclosure that they are required to get by law, but they need," according to a clip of the interview Bloomberg shared on X.
Campbell's post
| X/CampbellJAustin
The crypto exchange Coinbase filed a petition asking the SEC to use its official rulemaking process to create comprehensive regulations for the crypto industry. According to Gensler, the SEC denied Coinbase's petition in December. In his statement, Gensler said he believes the securities laws established in 1933 and 1934 are sufficient to regulate the crypto industry. "The existing securities regime appropriately governs crypto asset securities," Gensler said.
SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda dissented from the SEC's denial of the rulemaking petition. In their statement about their dissent, Peirce and Uyeda said while they acknowledge the SEC's ability to set the timing of its rulemaking agenda, they believe Coinbase's petition raised issues that need to be addressed. Addressing those issues is "a core part of being a responsible regulator," they said. "The public benefits from open conversations about how new products and services can be offered within a sensible regulatory framework to meet the needs of our fellow Americans."
Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said that when Coinbase was approved to go public in 2021, Gensler said during Congressional testimony that existing regulatory authorities were not applicable to the digital asset industry, according to a post on X. Grewal also stated that Rostin Behnam, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has said that many digital assets are commodities according to existing law.
Campbell is also the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting, according to his LinkedIn profile. Additionally, he is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, where he teaches blockchain markets infrastructure. Campbell's previous roles include chief risk officer and head of portfolio management at Paxos and head of stable value products at Global Rates Trading.
