The U.S. SEC wants to tighten laws on crypto custodians that hold user funds.
Due to the complexity of protecting assets like bitcoin from theft or hacking, trading platforms like Coinbase have started offering the service in recent years.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the top financial regulator on Wall Street, has advocated for tougher regulations for companies that hold assets for fund managers. As the industry continues to come under pressure from regulators, this decision may place additional restrictions on cryptocurrency services like Coinbase and Kraken.
Using qualified custodians, the SEC voted 4-1 on Wednesday to propose a regulation that would increase the sorts of assets that investment advisers, including hedge funds and pension funds, are obliged to keep. If adopted, the new regulation would broaden the scope of the safeguarding requirement to include any assets, including digital currencies, that financial advisers are entrusted with.
The traditional business categories that meet the requirements for qualified custodians are banks, trust organizations, and broker-dealers. Despite this, trading platforms like Coinbase have started to offer the service over the past few years due to the intricacies involved in safeguarding assets like bitcoin from being stolen or hacked.
Because other federal regulators aggressively work to prohibit custodians like banks from maintaining consumer bitcoin holdings, the measure creates a new threat to the custody policy of cryptocurrency exchanges. Additionally, the changes occur as the SEC aggressively ramps up its enforcement activities.
The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase advertises itself as a licenced cryptocurrency custodian on its website, with thousands of institutional clients using its Prime platform to secure their funds. During the first nine months of 2022, the company's custodial services generated $68.4 million in revenue, 21% less than during the same period in 2021.
Hester Peirce, an SEC commissioner, pointed out that the Commission lacks the jurisdiction to directly regulate custodians in reaction to Gensler's claimed anti-crypto stance. Peirce questioned who would be responsible if a qualified custodian failed to meet these requirements given their lack of regulatory authority.
The ability to enforce these new regulations on the larger crypto market is granted to Gensler's office by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which was passed in the wake of the previous great financial disaster. Despite recent reports that the SEC is looking into crypto custodial difficulties, SEC officials insisted that the agency has been working on this plan for a while and that it is not a reaction to any current bitcoin drama.
