Mark Cuban Warns Crypto Faces Nightmare From SEC's Next Move: 'Wait Till You See What They Come Up With'

Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban has warned that the Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC) next steps to regulate cryptocurrency would be a nightmare for the industry.

What Happened: “Wait till you see what they come up with for registration of tokens. That's the nightmare that's waiting for the crypto industry,” said Cuban in a tweet on Saturday.

“How else do you keep thousands of lawyers employed and create reasons to ask for more taxpayer money?” he added.

Think this is bad? Wait till you see what they come up with for registration of tokens. That's the nightmare that's waiting for the crypto industry. How else do you keep thousands of lawyers employed and create reasons to ask for more taxpayer money? https://t.co/eoDAiyDxlR https://t.co/mjr9LxnDZB

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 23, 2022

Cuban added a link to a YouTube video documenting a 2014 call he made to the SEC to enquire about insider trading regulations, the outcome of which left him shocked. 

The Dallas Mavericks owner’s tweet was in response to a tweet from Senator Pat Toomey, who criticized the regulator for launching an enforcement action before disclosing their view on why certain cryptocurrency tokens are securities.

The enforcement action in question was insider trading charges filed against a former Coinbase Global Inc COIN product manager and two of his associates last week.

Today we announced insider trading charges against a former Coinbase product manager, his brother, and his friend for perpetrating a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding certain crypto assets that would be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform.

— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) July 21, 2022

The SEC alleged that nine of the tokens in the case were actually securities by law, a claim that Coinbase said it 100% disagrees with.

Price Action: The cryptocurrency market saw a 1.5% fall over the last day to $1.01 trillion. At press time, BitcoinBTC/USD was trading at $22,000, down 1.8% over the last 24 hours. Ethereum ETH/USD was trading at $1,523, down 2.47% and Dogecoin DOGE/USD was trading at $0.064, down 4.58% over the same period.