Messari CEO Ryan Selkis penned a statement today detailing the company’s legal battle with the SEC. Selkis’ tones are harsh, but also important. We didn’t want to miss any details, as the text is extremely long. Here are Selkis’ tones.
Strong Statements Towards the SEC
Selkis said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is no longer a serious or respected federal agency, and that the current Chairman is corrupt, inefficient, and incompetent. Thanks to modern technology, his usefulness is questionable at best. The following statements are just a reflection of Selkis’ salvos: A Prize Pool Worth 21 Million TL Awaits You from BinanceTR! Participating and winning has never been easier.. You can sign up to BinanceTR from this link. Get your first crypto!
And worst of all, it appears to exist solely to benefit itself and its federal employees, rather than the citizens it is charged with protecting from fraud and abuse, the markets it is charged with monitoring and improving the health of, and the organizations it is supposed to promote the raising of capital.
Selkis He stated that for the above reasons, Messari would not have any formal or informal dealings with the SEC until it was reformed and its leadership changed. Again, his statements were extremely harsh:
We now treat the agency as a hostile adversary, a competitor, and an unnecessary federal regulator.
Selkis Emphasizes Decision Point for Situation
“After years of research and development and engagement with SEC staff, we have decided to declare our independence from the SEC and challenge the legitimacy of this agency when it comes to information reporting solutions for cryptocurrency markets,” Seliks said.
While they enjoy constructive and productive working relationships with other regulators around the world, Selkis emphasized that such a path is not possible with this SEC, and that their team will instead compete aggressively to provide better, faster, and cheaper information reporting for cryptocurrency markets.
Noting that the scope of their mission at Messari has expanded significantly over the past few months, Selkis underlined that they believe public Blockchains will eventually be used to issue and settle all types of financial assets globally, and that their design and assumed transparency will significantly change disclosure norms for public market investors across asset classes. He commented:
Crypto, artificial intelligence and given modern technologies such as social tools, we believe that private market actors are better positioned to meet this public need than government service providers. We also believe that well-funded and targeted investigative journalism will prove (and in fact has already proven) more timely and effective in exposing fraud and abuse than top-down regulatory structures.
What’s next?
In the coming weeks and months, SECUnderlining that they will fully implement our strategy to challenge the legitimacy of through the courts, Congress and the media, Ryan Selkis announced that they plan to put forward the following arguments in particular and to disclose some important basic facts to the American investing public. Accordingly, the arguments will be as follows.
The SEC’s approach to crypto is ineffective. The agency’s current approach to crypto markets has failed to detect costly (alleged) scams at FTX, Celsius, Genesis, and other U.S. market participants, while its lawsuits against legitimate actors like Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini reek more of political targeting than fraud prevention.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is not only incompetent, he is corrupt. Chairman Gensler’s failure to articulate a rational or consistent approach to market regulation for crypto, including how to determine whether a particular asset has the critical characteristics of a security, is having a chilling effect on the development of crypto markets in the U.S. His mounting legal losses undermine faith in the integrity of the SEC’s work. The evidence of the chairman’s alleged corruption and abuse of power undermines faith in his ability to set the agenda for this federal agency during his tenure.
The SEC has no legitimate claim to regulate crypto markets after the Jarkesy and Loper-Bright decisions. The crypto space’s lawsuits against the SEC have gained significant traction in recent weeks following two Supreme Court decisions that weakened the agency’s internal administrative courts and the Chevron derogation. There are open questions under the substantial questions doctrine as to whether the agency has the legal authority to regulate crypto markets.
Continued deference to the SEC will ensure that America loses its leadership in crypto. Regulators in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia are far ahead of American financial regulators in technical sophistication and rulemaking for crypto markets. The result is clear guidance for entrepreneurs and technical innovators who increasingly choose to develop the world’s future financial and internet rails overseas. This dynamic will increasingly endanger large segments of the American economy and the US dollar itself.
Messari already provides a superior global service to the market at no taxpayer expense. Our founder and broader investigation team have directly helped uncover financial distress and/or fraud at many of the largest crypto financial services companies in history. These include the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, the FTX bankruptcy and alleged fraud, the Genesis Capital bankruptcy and alleged fraud, and many others.
This challenge shared by Ryan Selkis from X will likely be a cornerstone of the fight against the SEC in the coming timeframes.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not contain investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should carry out their transactions in line with their own research.
