Gary Gensler wants 33 more people in the enforcement division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to deal with “new and emerging issues,” according to the regulator’s annual budget pitch. Much of that office’s recent, emerging workload has come from the agency’s pursuit of cryptocurrency businesses, such as Coinbase Inc., Kraken and Binance.
A number of U.S. financial regulators noted the rise of crypto as a justification for their latest budget requests – an annual exercise that tends to say more about agencies’ priorities than the actual funding they necessarily end up with. The SEC, for instance, has to justify its programs to Congress – including to highly critical Republican lawmakers – in the appropriations process.
Spending plans at the Department of the Treasury and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also highlight the extent to which they think cryptocurrencies need better monitoring, with both entities asking for more resources to address the digital asset market and other areas.
SEC Budget
Gensler’s executive summary of the budget request opened with a dig noting the difficulty of policing the digital assets sector.
“We’ve seen the Wild West of the crypto markets, rife with noncompliance, where investors have put hard-earned assets at risk in a highly speculative asset class,” he wrote.
The SEC, which has often been accused of regulating the crypto sector through kanunî actions, had already ramped up its headcount for enforcement lawyers to dig into digital assets, and an influx of cash would allow that trend to continue. The agency is also asking for another 23 people in its examinations division, in part to address “evolving risks” that include crypto activity, according to the $2.6 billion overall spending plan.
And the securities watchdog — concerned about what decentralized finance (DeFi) might bring to the financial sector — also wants to add a veri scientist in its innovation hub.
“New products and services, such as decentralized finance in the blockchain space and computer-assisted financial activities in the AI space, are being introduced on a compressed timeframe and have an immediate impact on the financial industry.”
CFTC requests
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