For years now, too many leaders on Wall Street and Washington either looked the other way or unquestioningly supported the crypto industry as it worked relentlessly to infiltrate our financial system and rewrite the laws and rules to benefit their special interests. Tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying fueled this effort. Much of this lobbying originated from too many current and former public officials who leverage their government service to engage in influence peddling. Leaders who should have known better simply accepted the pixie dust of “innovation” and the fairytale of crypto riches, best exemplified by policymakers’ wrongheaded embrace of Sam Bankman-Fried in the lead up to the spectacular collapse of FTX. While many came to their senses after Bankman-Fried’s arrest and conviction, the lure of crypto money has proven resilient among policymakers even after massive hacks, scams and bankruptcies.
Better Markets has stood up against crypto special interests and their multi-fronted attacks on consumers, investors, and the financial system. Crypto is rewriting the rules governing investments and trading to serve their interests at the SEC, while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with the Commission to drop successful enforcement actions. Crypto cheerleaders have taken over the CFTC. They are retooling derivatives rules at the expense of traditional commodities businesses like farmers and ranchers. The crypto industry has also won a law enforcement standdown at the Department of Justice and is promoting their preferred legislation in Congress.
Better Markets’ resources track, highlight, and oppose these harmful and aggressive actions and continues to stand up against the crypto tidal wave of money that threatens to overwhelm vital consumer and economic protections.
Our Benjamin Schiffrin, Director of Securities Policy, is a member of the Task Force and took part in the roundtable, where he emphasized the importance of consumer protections for retail investors.
‘The S.E.C. failed to live up to its mission to protect investors and the markets,’ Benjamin Schiffrin of Better Markets, a nonprofit that fights for stricter financial regulations, said in a statement.
Dennis Kelleher, CEO of investor advocacy think tank Better Markets, warned that bitcoin was still vulnerable to crypto fraudsters and said approving the ETFs was a “historic mistake.”
“The SEC’s action today has changed nothing about this worthless financial product: bitcoin and crypto still have no legitimate use,” he said.
In Morning Money Dennis Kelleher shares that approval of Bitcoin ETFs will give the crypto a veneer of legitimacy despite its record of criminality & lawlessness.
“The FDIC deposit insurance is the gold standard for trust, confidence, and protection, which is why too many in the crypto industry want to misleadingly if not falsely suggest to crypto investors that their money is protected by the FDIC. That false comfort not only harms investors, but also the insurance program, insured banks, and the broader banking system as people lose faith in the FDIC [and] that’s what today’s rule aims to stop.”
“He and a bunch of others at Binance should have been charged with substantive violations, not what is a minimalist charge almost akin to a record-keeping violation,” said Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, a group that advocates for tougher financial regulation.
“The lawlessness if not criminal activities of crypto will continue and increase until all prosecutors, regulators and elected officials force the industry to act like all other law-abiding people and firms in the financial industry,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that works to “build a more secure financial system for all Americans,” according to its website.
“History is going to show this will be a disaster courting a catastrophe for the rest of the country and especially for Main Street Americans, who are going to get stuck with the bill cleaning up after the next financial crash,” says Dennis Kelleher, a prominent crypto critic at advocacy group Better Markets
“It’s the most brute force display of money and power in the legislature I have ever seen,” says Amanda Fischer, chief operating officer for Better Markets.
“I talked to Dennis Kelleher, the head of the nonpartisan watchdog Better Markets. He points out that with Republicans controlling the White House, and likely Congress, there just won’t be as many guardrails on the crypto industry.
DENNIS KELLEHER: And unfortunately, that means more scams, frauds and criminals running amok, with those regulators and prosecutors mostly ignoring it all.
ASPAN: Kelleher also points out that whatever your feelings on crypto, there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s why people voted the way they did. Many of the campaign ads the crypto industry bought didn’t even mention crypto. They highlighted other issues to help get crypto-friendly lawmakers elected.”
Needless to say, the crypto industry hasn’t left everyone agog with wonder. “It’s a lawless industry with a business model that is basically ‘catch us if you can’ [with lawsuits], and before you can do that we’ll buy enough politicians to get a special law passed that has the appearance of regulation with the reality of deregulation,” Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the financial reform nonprofit Better Markets told The American Prospect back in April; he has also written for the Financial Timesdiscouraging Harris from caving to the industry.
CNBC: Dennis Kelleher joined CNBC’s Crypto World with Brandon Gomez to discuss why Vice President Harris should reject the crypto industry’s massive influence campaign and focus on issues that matter to Main Street.
“The crypto industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to distract policymakers and the public from its long rap sheet of criminal convictions, predatory conduct, illegal behavior, bankruptcies, lawsuits, and scandals,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of consumer advocacy group Better Markets. “These crypto PACs are looking to make the crypto industry’s work in Congress even easier by trying to defeat elected officials who put the public interest first and are not crypto-lackeys.”
“A single relatively small industry is literally trying to buy enough politicians to hijack the public agenda,” said Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a financial reform advocacy group. “It’s pretty breathtaking.”
To Kelleher, at the crypto-critical Better Markets group, there’s another meaningful number of people to consider: All the voters who have been turned off by the long list of crimes and scandals associated with the asset class. ‘It’s hard to believe that there are going to be many people who conclude that voting in favor of a bunch of criminals and predators is somehow in their interest,’ he said.
“And this week Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, another non-profit, and crypto critic, wrote that ‘a crypto industry dark money group . . . with the Orwellian name ‘Fairshake’ raised nearly $80mn in just the last three months of 2023’. Kelleher says this is being used to attack politicians who have expressed reservations about crypto, such as the Democrat senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. Indeed, the campaign has already helped to knock out one anti-crypto voice, Katie Porter, who recently lost a Californian primary.”
“They know the public views crypto like kryptonite – it turns off more voters than it turns on,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and chief executive officer of Better Markets, a group that pushes for greater market oversight. But “you can bet that wherever crypto spends a penny, they will claim they have influenced the outcome and expect the winners to pay them back.”
“What we’re going to see in 2024 is a massive ramp up in crypto-funded ‘dark’ money campaigns against anybody who isn’t a crypto shill,” Kelleher said. “By the end of the year, when it’s all added up, I think the crypto industry is going to put hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to defeat people who want to actually represent the voters, rather than represent crypto.”
FTX
Bloomberg TV: Dennis Kelleher Talks SBF, Lawless Crypto Industry, & the 2024 Campaign on Bloomberg Crypto (4/2/24)
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