SEC Commissioner: Fraud in Cryptocurrency Market
During a Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing on Thursday, Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw told senators that rampant fraud in the cryptocurrency market led to her reluctance to approve a bitcoin ETF earlier this year.
In January, Crenshaw held out against the trading products, pointing out that they were not technically ETFs but exchange-traded products (ETPs) that operated under different rules. The commissioner said the agency's approval of the Bitcoin (BTC) product would "set us on a wayward path that could further sacrifice investor protection". In weighing whether this was in the public interest, she reiterated on Thursday that she believed she had to oppose the move: "Because there is serious fraud and opacity in the underlying global cash markets."