In Brief
US regulators have been complicit as belligerent lawmakers allegedly broke a law meant to prevent insider trading and conflict of interest. Some 74 members of Congress will likely go scot-free after they bought and sold millions of dollars in stocks that they failed to report.
It comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees issues of market manipulation, clamped down on similar violations in crypto. The sector has always maintained a cynic detachment from any form of central control.
Issues of insider trading in crypto might have festered for some time. But its characteristic distrust of centralized oversight could be justified after this apparent selective application of the law by the securities regulator, according to observers.
“Because of the lack of regulation, various questionable and market manipulating practices have gained traction – such as pump and dump schemes,” Soham Panchamiya, an associate at crypto-focused law firm Reed Smith, told BeInCrypto.
“Ultimately, these sorts of efforts have always existed historically – we have seen this in the stock market for many years until regulations clamped down on the worst of it,” he added.
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