A pushback against stocks-like products in Germany and tougher talk in Washington suggest that key financial regulators are bristling at cryptocurrency operators’ incursions into tightly-controlled public markets.
Crypto industry executives and securities law experts around the world are closely scrutinising the tussle between German regulator BaFin and crypto exchange Binance, which deepened this week.
Binance, one of the world’s biggest crypto firms, has asked BaFin to retract an allegation that it may be breaking securities laws with its new offering of ‘tokens’ meant to mimic a clutch of US stocks — a request the regulator has rebuffed.
In the same week, new chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler, known on Wall Street as a tough operator, told a hearing on Capitol Hill that the “close to $2tn [cryptoasset] market is one that could benefit from greater investor protection”.
“Right now, the exchanges, trading in these crypto assets, do not have a regulatory framework either at the SEC or our sister agency, the Commodity Futures…
