Peirce Critiques SEC's Crypto Drama

The Breakdown First Five - Thursday, March 7, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Crypto Wins Super Tuesday

Big crypto donors succeeded in all four primary elections that were targeted with spending on Tuesday, marking a successful debut for the political wing of the crypto lobby. Fairshake, the crypto SuperPAC, managed to tip the scale against Warren acolyte Katie Porter in California with $10M in negative advertising spend. She complained that billionaires had rigged the election by spending money against her. Fairshake said “The crypto voter is here.”

4. Eau de Binance

Gender inequality in the industry is back in the spotlight, but Binance thinks they have the solution. The exchange introduced a ladies perfume called ‘Crypto’ for International Women’s Day. The publicity stunt was only a framing to point out that Women have been largely underserved in the onboarding process, the fragrance doesn’t actually exist. The move was panned as tone deaf. The memes wrote themselves.

3. Bank Failures Round 2?

New York Community Bancorp, the bank which absorbed Signature, had a stunning stock crash. The stock collapsed by 40% after the bank disclosed that they were “seeking to raise equity capital in a bid to shore up confidence." After trading was halted for several hours, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin led a $1B cash infusion through his private equity firm. The stock has now recovered, but is this just the first sign of more banking trouble?

2. CFTC Nixes Prometheum Play

CFTC Commissioner Rostin Behnam won’t be fooled by SEC tricks to label Ethereum a security. During a congressional hearing, Behnam was asked about Prometheum's attempt to launch a regulated Ethereum project, which many suspect could be leveraged by the SEC. His understanding is that the SEC is not collaborating with Prometheum and that they are on notice that declaring ETH a security would cause chaos in the regulated futures market. 

1. Peirce the Playwright

SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda have put together a dramatization of one of Gensler’s infamous “come in and register” meetings in their latest dissent. This time, the Commissioners are speaking out against the Shapeshift settlement, which fails to name any unregistered securities or allege customer harm. The Commissioners said it was the “latest installment in the serial drama of the Commission’s poorly conceived crypto policy.”