The SEC is poised to file fewer crypto cases in 2024

If things are feeling a little quiet — too quiet — then perhaps you’re just missing the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gensler’s agency has been gung ho about suing crypto startups, founders and other entities over the past few years. Ripple, Kraken, Coinbase, Binance, Justin Sun, Consensys and Block.one have all been on the receiving end, with some cases still ongoing.

Among those suits have been plenty of unquestionable cases brought against legitimate fraudsters and Ponzi schemers. 

But the rate of SEC actions has slowed dramatically over the past eight months. The SEC compiles a list of crypto actions on its website that totals to 152, and 58 of those were brought between 2022 and 2023.

Read more: Gensler’s SEC brought 46 crypto-related enforcements in 2023

This year to date, there have only been nine. Quick math shows the SEC has, on average, brought 23 crypto-related actions per year since 2019 — almost two per month, annualized. 

The chart above plots SEC crypto actions against the total crypto market cap since 2014 (the first SEC case was brought one year earlier, but TradingView’s index doesn’t go back that far). 

The large colorful shapes represent more high-profile SEC cases (the ones mentioned above as well as Terra, McAfee, BitConnect and some others). Purple diamonds refer to any cases involving a celebrity.

Smaller purple triangles are other actions, ranging from investment fraud to LBRY, Kik, ShapeShift and the Coinbase insider trader.

To match its average rate over the past five years, we should have seen 15 SEC lawsuits and other reproaches since January. And every year, around this time, crypto anticipates a potential flurry of cases coming out of the SEC. 

The US government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 — so hypothetically, if the SEC has cases to bring forward that were included in this fiscal year’s budget, then we should see those drop sometime over the next six weeks.

If the SEC doesn’t have a bevy of cases in the can, perhaps the lower number this year reflects a shift in priority to the big fish. 

Uniswap Labs could be among the next major entities to be sued, with the Brooklyn-headquartered firm receiving a Wells notice in April. A report from Axios earlier this month suggests that the SEC is still poking around after it started asking venture capitalists about the firm.

Perhaps there’s fewer cases to bring. Or just maybe, the SEC hasn’t been so keen to go out on a limb since the DEBT Box fiasco.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.