Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has taken issue with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to approve several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Warren claimed in a tweet that the agency was “wrong on the law and wrong on the policy” when it came to approving Bitcoin ETFs offered by asset managers including BlackRock, Grayscale, and Ark Invest.
She went on to say, “If the SEC is going to let crypto burrow even deeper into our financial system, then it’s more urgent than ever that crypto follow basic anti-money laundering rules.”
“I have often said that the Commission acts within the law and how the courts interpret the law,” SEC chair Gary Gensler said in a statement following the approval of the ETFs. He also mentioned that “circumstances changed” after a court order compelled the regulator to review Grayscale’s application.
Given that it had previously approved Bitcoin futures ETFs, the court at the time determined that the SEC had not provided a reasonable justification for rejecting Grayscale’s application to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product into a spot Bitcoin ETF. The court deemed this “unlike regulatory treatment of like products” to be illegal.
Warren is used to criticism of cryptocurrencies and the crypto sector, having connected them to terrorist financing and money laundering while asserting that organizations like Islamic Jihad and Hamas had raised “over $130 million in crypto.”
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