Congressman Auchincloss and Senator Warren Call on SEC to Explain Legal Loophole for Trump’s Meme Coins
Washington, DC – Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.-04), Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) demanding answers about a new SEC Division of Corporate Finance Staff Statement that could shield President Donald Trump’s recently launched meme coins from regulatory scrutiny. The lawmakers’ letter comes as the SEC’s Crypto Task Force hosts its first roundtable in a series purportedly designed to determine the extent of the SEC’s authority to police crypto markets for fraud and scams.
“[T]he U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Corporate Finance (Division) released a Staff Statement asserting that ‘persons who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins’ are not subject to federal securities laws. The Staff Statement comes just weeks after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump launched their own meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, and conveniently presents a legal interpretation that could shield the President’s and First Lady’s coins from regulatory scrutiny,” wrote the lawmakers.
In the letter the lawmakers raise concerns about the timing and implications of this policy shift, which asserts that individuals who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins are not subject to federal securities laws. The statement, released by the agency just weeks after Donald and Melania Trump debuted their own meme coins, comes amid a broader pattern of SEC actions that benefit cryptocurrency firms at the expense of retail investors.
“The Staff Statement is, notably, just one of many recent SEC actions aiming to arbitrarily deregulate the cryptocurrency industry. In just the past two months, for example, the SEC has dropped ten major lawsuits and investigations against cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken,” wrote the lawmakers.
The SEC Staff Statement declaring that the SEC will not enforce the law against crypto coins like President Trump’s comes ahead of the first SEC-hosted roundtable on cryptocurrency of the Trump Administration.
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