As agency actions increasingly insulate SEC leadership from accountability, crypto scam risk grows for everyday Americans and older adults
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Benjamin Schiffrin, Director of Securities Policy, issued the following statement on today’s filing of Better Markets’ Comment Letter to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force:
“Today, the SEC is hosting a webinar about relationship investment scams to commemorate World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Criminals often perpetrate relationship investment scams by using crypto, and the FBI’s 2024 report on internet crime revealed that Americans over 60 reported losing almost $2.9 billion to crypto frauds last year. This made Americans over 60 the most financially impacted demographic, with the top scam categories of all cybercrime affecting older adults including romance scams and cryptocurrency frauds.
“All this means that the SEC should be doing everything possible to protect older Americans, as well as all other Americans, from crypto frauds. Instead, as Commissioner Crenshaw recently put it, the SEC and its Crypto Task Force seem only to want to get the SEC ‘out of the way of anything and everything in the crypto space.’ And one pernicious—and underreported—way in which the Crypto Task Force is doing this is through staff guidance. Such guidance means there was no Commission vote and hence no accountability on the part of the Commissioners. Older Americans (and all Americans) deserve more accountability when the SEC makes policy decisions affecting them.
“As our comment letter shows, the Crypto Task Force’s use of staff guidance renders its pronouncements illegitimate. That’s because these statements are not the product of notice-and-comment rulemaking, which would require notice to the public of the specific policies the SEC was considering and an opportunity to oppose them before their implementation. Instead, the Crypto Task Force has chosen to simply articulate its preferred policies through staff guidance, which is more expedient but lacks legitimacy.
“The use of staff guidance rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking is especially troubling as both Chair Atkins and Commissioner Peirce, the head of the Crypto Task Force, have previously criticized the use in the crypto space of staff guidance rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking by the SEC under the prior administration. Yet under their leadership the Crypto Task Force has repeatedly acted through staff guidance, which prevents the public from being forewarned about the timing or substance of any of its pronouncements. We urge the SEC and the Crypto Task Force to do better in the future.”
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Better Markets is a non-profit, non-partisan, and independent organization founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to promote the public interest in the financial markets, support the financial reform of Wall Street and make our financial system work for all Americans again. Better Markets works with allies—including many in finance—to promote pro-market, pro-business and pro-growth policies that help build a stronger, safer financial system that protects and promotes Americans’ jobs, savings, retirements and more. To learn more, visit www.bettermarkets.org.
