Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: The SEC Comes for Crypto

SEC v. Crypto

“A decent rule of thumb,” I wrote in March, “is that all cryptocurrency exchanges are doing crimes, and if you’re lucky your exchange is doing only process crimes.” Like:

1. Is your exchange operating an illegal securities exchange in the US? Yes! Yes it is! The view of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, at least, is that every crypto exchange in the US is illegal. You might disagree — plenty of crypto exchange executives disagree, and we will talk more about the arguments below — but realistically, if you are trading crypto, you simply cannot be too squeamish about ...