Pro-XRP legal expert John Deaton has come for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) following its comment relating to the false Spot Bitcoin ETF approval post that was made by the media outlet Cointelegraph.
Deaton Questions SEC’s Credibility
In a post shared on his X (formerly Twitter) platform, Deaton stated that he disagrees with the SEC’s latest statement as the “best source of information about the SEC is not the SEC.” According to him, the Commission’s “confirmation bias and self-serving statements” already disqualified it in this regard.
Here’s a surprise: I disagree with the @SECGov’s latest statement. The best source of information about the SEC is NOT the SEC. Confirmation bias and self-serving statements by the SEC disqualify it. Likewise, pissed off investors are too close to be objective. Therefore, we… https://t.co/8SPEI43ORM
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) October 16, 2023
The lawyer was reacting to the Commission’s X post, where it warned the general public to be careful about what they read on the internet (likely in relation to the Cointelegraph post) and stated that “the best source of information about the SEC is the SEC.”
Deaton also seemed to suggest that the Commission could not be objective in making its decisions (possibly about the ETH Gate and the SEC’s conflict of interest), and that was why the crypto community looked to the judges who are independent and can check the excesses of the SEC, to help shape their view of the Commission.
SEC’s Arbitral And Capricious Nature Toward Spot Bitcoin ETFs
Deaton wasn’t done yet as he further went on to refer to Grayscale’s victory against the SEC, where the court noted that the Commission had acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it denied Grayscale’s application to convert its GBTC fund to a Spot Bitcoin ETF. The lawyer highlighted the Commission’s incompetence as he noted how “easy” it was to defeat such a claim.
In what seemed to be him highlighting the court’s view of the Commission, he mentioned that the Court of Appeals in the Grayscale case “unanimously concluded” that the SEC’s denial of a Spot Bitcoin ETF was “utter nonsense.” The Commission, up until the Grayscale case, had stated that its primary reservation about the fund was that it is susceptible to market manipulation.
However, the Appellate Court adopted Grayscale’s argument that the Spot and Futures market (of which the SEC has approved Bitcoin futures ETFs) were correlated. As such, there was no reason why it would deny a Spot Bitcoin ETF and approve a futures ETF when they seem to share the same risk regarding market manipulation.
Meanwhile, Deaton also alluded to the fact that a federal judge had once called the SEC’s lawyers hypocrites and that they lacked faithful allegiance to the law. With this in mind, this is why the legal expert has chosen to listen to the judges when it comes to issues relating to the SEC.
His comments come at a time when the crypto community seems to be looking up to the courts for direction on how the industry should be regulated in the wake of the SEC’s continued clampdown on several stakeholders in the industry.
