In a recent tweet, Bitcoin advocate and advisor to the president of El Salvador, Max Keiser, has stirred up controversy once again. Keiser took to Twitter to label a wide range of cryptocurrencies, including ETH, XRP, ADA, BNB, and thousands of others, as scams. He didn’t stop there; he also included NFTs in his scathing remark.
But why did Keiser make such audacious remarks?
Keiser is known for his aggressive stance toward altcoins and has often voiced criticism of them on social media. He has consistently referred to any coin other than Bitcoin as securities. In his latest tweet, he escalated his critique by labeling them as scams.
Selling toxic garbage to innocents is not an “innovation.”
Among his targets, Keiser frequently singles out XRP, denouncing it as unregistered security and supporting the SEC’s actions against it. This weekend, he took another jab at XRP, agreeing that the SEC was overstepping its bounds. However, he believes this knowledge won’t prevent the SEC from quashing XRP and other cryptocurrencies, while he describes BTC as “untouchable.”
XRP Community Lashes
Max Keiser’s remarks sparked a backlash from the XRP community, who responded with justifiable counterarguments. In response, John Deaton, the founder of CryptoLaw and an attorney representing XRP holders, stated that the SEC cannot eliminate XRP as it is merely software code and not a security.
The regulatory landscape surrounding cryptocurrencies has seen increased enforcement actions by authorities such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One notable case is the SEC’s 2020 lawsuit against Ripple Labs, alleging that the company failed to register XRP as a security.
Many crypto businesses have expressed concerns over the lack of clarity regarding the rules they are expected to follow. In June, the SEC further unsettled the crypto markets by filing lawsuits against two major crypto exchanges, Binance and Coinbase. Both exchanges maintain that they do not offer securities.
This development caused a ripple effect throughout the crypto market. IOG, the developer of the Cardano blockchain, vehemently asserted that its ADA token is “under no circumstances a security” and criticized the SEC’s filing for containing “numerous factual inaccuracies.” Similarly, Solana and Polygon clarified that their native tokens, SOL and MATIC, do not fall under the securities category.
