The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the main regulator when it comes to securities offerings. As a regulatory body, it oversees compliance among US securities offerings. A lot of cryptocurrency proponents, however, are not too thrilled with the SEC's authority and have attempted to somehow avoid being subjected to its regulations. The aim is to do so without having to disclose risks to potential investors, which is what the SEC normally enforces.

So called initial coin offerings (ICOs) are tokens generated exclusively for the purpose of bringing profits to investors. This acts as evidence that it is indeed a security, and therefore, falls under the SEC's jurisdiction. The same applies to Initial DEX Offerings (IDOs), usually carried out on exchanges like Uniswap or PancakeSwap.

In essence, any form of offering, although, it may be a commodity or just a piece of code, can be classified as a security, in as far as it passes the Howey Test; this is what the regulator usually uses to determine if a certain offering is indeed a security.

The SEC is basically in charge of ensuring that issuers that are offering the security will disclose possible risks to investors. Without it, the issuer will have the power to withhold material, damaging information.

In any case, a lot of people who parttake in the cryptocurrency community have been trying to put an end to SEC's authority, but without much success. The majority whip of House of Representatives, Tom Emmer, has even accused Chairman Gary Gensler of not providing a straight forward route on which digital assets firms can comply with the SEC's registration requirements.

But in the same breath, why don't they have the same enthusiasm to abolish entities such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)? It's because those will still remain in place to collect fees and revenues to run the government.

So until the SEC's jurisdiction is abolished, crypto and blockchain enthusiasts will remain at the mercy of its regulations. But until that day comes, it will continue to be the ultimate authority on securities.



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