Scrutiny of major crypto institutions is intensifying

The crypto crowd ftxseccftcis hardly known for understating its own importance. Its members dubbed the implosion of , the crypto exchange which collapsed spectacularly in November, the industry’s “Lehman Brothers moment”, a nod to the enormous ramifications of the fall of the investment bank. Now they say the industry is going through its “Dodd-Frank moment”, a reference to the sprawling financial regulations that were put in place after Lehman’s collapse.In America, if crypto firms are regulated at all, they fall under the purview of various agencies—from the Securities and Exchange Commission (), a markets regulator, and the , which oversees commodities, to numerous state bodies. All were ramping up enforcement actions against crypto businesses in 2022, after the go-go years of 2020 and 2021 pushed crypto products into the mainstream. But moves to curtail various crypto activities have now begun to reach a frenetic pace.