MAY 16, 2023,
昨天由亚特兰大联邦储备银行举行的第 27 届年度金融市场会议以关于美国证券交易委员会在防止传统银行业系统性蔓延方面的作用的演讲开始。在谈到数字银行业务时，Gensler 说：“我不是在谈论普遍不合规的加密市场。”
会议问答环节中，里士满联邦储备银行行长兼首席执行官汤姆巴尔金随后要求他对与 Coinbase 的纠纷发表评论。SEC 已向 Coinbase 发出 Wells 通知（可能是基于怀疑 Coinbase 在销售未注册证券），作为回应，Coinbase 起诉 SEC，试图迫使其为加密行业制定新规则。
“为什么 SEC 不想为该市场发布规则？” 巴尔金问道。
“因为，汤姆，规则已经公布了，而且很直接地说，这是一个基本上不合规运作的领域。我们的机构已经制定了关于什么是交易所、什么是经纪自营商、什么是托管和资产顾问以及如何注册证券发行的规则。这些规则已经存在，并且没有任何新技术会使其与国会制定的公共政策不一致。”
“我们研究了中间人，”他说。“中间的金融中介机构，网络中的节点，如果他们的平台上有证券，他们就需要合规。”
“我们随时准备帮助这些中介机构合规。我会说他们的商业模式倾向于建立在不合规的基础上。他们的商业模式往往建立在客户资金的基础上，混合起来，他们充满了冲突，汤姆。我们不会让纽约证券交易所作为做市商、对冲基金直接在交易所运作，并混合所有这些东西，自己拥有代币并从代币中筹集资金，杠杆化，借代币，甚至不以适当的方式公开披露。我们在代币规则中所要求的只是注册并进行全面、公平和真实的披露，当然还有中介机构进行注册。处理冲突并确保他们有经过时间考验的规则来防止欺诈和操纵等。”
他还更广泛地谈到了加密原住民看待他们的行业的方式与政府看待它的方式之间的脱节，认为大多数“去中心化”平台或协议实际上以某种方式集中在少数运营商周围。
“我们还不知道中本聪是谁，她、他或他们是谁。这是一个建立在某种概念之上的领域，即去中心化，即使自古以来金融就倾向于中心化。去中心化，缺乏权威，反商业银行，反中央银行，全球范围内的离网方式。然而，当他们破产并进入破产法庭时，它在很大程度上依赖于法律，你知道我们看到了什么。”
“说这些东西是去中心化的是错误的说法。他们倾向于集中化。”
在评论的最后，Gensler 谈到了加密货币与传统金融之间日益密切的联系，以及是否会在一个可能失控的部门引发“大火”。
First Republic Bank、 Silicon Valley Bank和 Signature Bank的倒闭是美国历史上第二大、第三大和第四大银行倒闭事件。一家较小的银行 Silvergate 也倒闭了。SVB、Signature 和 Silvergate 都对加密客户和资产有大量敞口。
“最近的银行业问题，四家倒闭的银行，其中两家拥有大量加密账簿，第三家有一家重要的稳定币发行人将存款放在那里，这实际上导致了第二大稳定币运营商的脱钩。因此，至少有 3 家这样的银行在加密货币市场和加密参与者之间甚至存在某种相互联系，”Gensler 说。
In a question-and-answer session at the 27th annual Financial Markets Conference, held by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta yesterday, Gensler was asked about the SEC’s dispute with Coinbase and crypto regulation generally, and he gave a bleak appraisal of the legal position of the crypto economy as a whole.
The session began with a speech about the SEC’s role in preventing systemic contagion in the traditional banking sector. In a throwaway remark while talking about digital banking, Gensler said “I’m not talking about the generally non-compliant crypto markets.”
Tom Barkin, the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, then asked him to comment on the dispute with Coinbase. The SEC has served Coinbase with a Wells notice (probably based on the suspicion that Coinbase may be marketing unregistered securities) and in response Coinbase sued the agency in an attempt to force it to make new rules for the crypto industry.
“Why doesn’t the SEC want to publish rules for that market?” Barkin asked.
“Because, Tom, the rules have already been published and to make it quite direct this is a field that has been operating largely non-compliant. Our agency has put out rules about what it is to be an exchange, what it means be a broker-dealer, what it is to be an adviser of custody and assets, and how to register a securities offering. Those rules are in existence and there’s nothing about a new technology that makes it non-consistent with the public policies that Congress has laid out.”
“We’ve looked at the intermediaries in the middle,” he said. “Financial intermediaries in the middle, nodes in the network, and they need to come into compliance if they’ve got securities on their platforms.”
“We stand ready to help those intermediaries come into compliance. I would say that their business models though tend to be built on non-compliance. Their business models tend to be built on customer funds, commingling it, they’re rife with conflicts, Tom. We wouldn’t let the New York Stock Exchange operate direct on the exchange as market makers, as a hedge fund, and commingle all these things, and have a token themselves and raise money off the token, leverage off, borrow off the token, and not even give public disclosure in a proper way. All we call upon in our rules for the tokens is, register and have full, fair and truthful disclosure and the intermediaries to register, of course. Deal with the conflicts and ensure they have time-tested rules against fraud and manipulation and the like.”
Gensler then expanded into the SEC’s philosophy on how the regulation of securities relates to crypto, by summarizing a legal doctrine known as the Howey test. “If the public is investing money anticipating profit, based on the efforts of others, in a common enterprise, that’s a security, an investment contract.”
He also talked more broadly about the disconnect between the way crypto natives see their industry and the way the government sees it, arguing that most “decentralized” platforms or protocols are in fact actually centralized around a few operators in some way.
“We don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is yet, who she, or he, or they, were. It’s a field built off of sort of a concept to not use centralization even though finance since antiquity tended toward centralization. To be decentralized, lack of authorities, anti-commercial bank, anti-central bank, a worldwide off-the-grid approach. And yet it very much relies on the law when they go bankrupt and they’re in bankruptcy court. And you know what we’ve seen.”
“But there’s this field that arose where the investing public, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, around the globe — it’s not just a U.S. market it’s largely an international market — is investing their hard-earned money hoping for a better future and that therein lies the core of what a security is… It’s a false narrative to say that these things are that decentralized. They tend toward centralization. You can find a website for nearly [all]. If there’s 12,000 or 23,000 tokens you can find some group of entrepreneurs in a website, in a Reddit channel, in a Twitter channel around most of these, again without prejudging any one of them.”
Toward the end of his comments, Gensler related the increasing links between crypto and traditional finance, in the context of whether a “fire” might start in one sector that could get out of control.
The collapse of First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the second-, third- and fourth-largest bank failures in U.S. history. A smaller bank, Silvergate, also collapsed. SVB, Signature and Silvergate all had significant exposure to crypto clients and assets.
“Recent banking issues, the four banks that failed, two of them had significant crypto books, the third had a significant stablecoin issuer put their deposits there and it actually led to a depegging, it was called, for the second-largest stablecoin operator. So there was even some interconnectedness in crypto markets and crypto actors with at least three of these banks,” Gensler said.
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