The US counterpart of India’s SEBI is called SEC — Securities and Exchange Commission. Its chairman has requested the Congress to vest the agency with more authority to monitor the trading, lending and platforms of cryptocurrency. He calls it the Wild West that is vulnerable to risk and fraud.

There are many tokens which may be unregistered securities. The prices are open to manipulation. The investors are at risk. More authority from the Congress would mean prevention of transactions, products and platforms falling among the regulatory cracks.

There is increasing investor interest in cryptocurrencies which have reached formidable capitalisation. Investors have in their portfolios digital tokens. However, we lack the oversight of the market.

There should be powers to oversee cryptocurrency exchanges. There should be oversight of crypto lending and peer-to-peer decentralised finance — DeFi. These allow crypto transactions without intermediation of traditional banks. In the absence of regulation, a lot of people may get hurt.

Blockchain Association is open to find workable solutions, and currently also complies with oversight by the state and federal bodies.

It is not fair to describe the crypto economy as the Wild West, as the crypto industry is not totally unregulated.