Gary Gensler is long gone from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
President Trump was swept into office last November along with at least 240 pro-crypto candidates for Congress.
Former PayPal CEO David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar, proclaimed that "the reign of terror against crypto is over, and the beginning of innovation in America for crypto has just begun."
So why is the SEC continuing its campaign to destroy the one cryptocurrency company that played by the rules - before there were any rules?
Why is former Gensler acolyte Mark Cave allowed to continue his former boss' vendetta against Unicoin Inc., the only publicly reporting and audited cryptocurrency firm in the U.S. that has spent millions on compliance, and which provided robust disclosures explaining the risks of investing in its Unicoin Rights Certificates?
For that matter, why is Cave targeting Unicoin co-founder Silvina Moschini, the Women Economic Forum's "Woman of the Decade" and recipient of the EQUALS award in Tech for creating one of the world's most innovative projects focused on shortening the gender gap?
Moschini and Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin are also the co-founders of the popular Unicorn Hunters streaming series in which entrepreneurs pitched their companies to the panelists – and to the viewing audience.
Real Screen described the show as mixing entertainment with the potential for consumers to back select pre-IPO investment opportunities – democratizing wealth creation. The pair were joined as panelists by such notables as former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and NSYNC superstar Lance Bass.
Why did Gensler and Cave not take cues from former SEC Chairman Michael Pinowar, one of only three SEC Commissioners who is also a Ph.D. economist? Pinowar had praised Konanykhin and Moschini, stating that "Shows like Unicorn Hunters are making people aware that there are these opportunities out there."
Perhaps this is because Unicoin was about to become the first NYSE listed cryptocurrency company, which would represent a humiliating defeat for Gensler in his signature policy - his notorious 'War on Crypto'.
The SEC's charges against Unicoin and several of its principals are based on Cave's claim that they had "exploited thousands of investors with fictitious promises that its tokens, when issued, would be backed by real-world assets" – assets Cave claimed were worth a mere fraction of what the company had claimed.
Konanykhin, who had already won five lawsuits against the federal government, noted that Unicoin had passed two prior, exhaustive SEC investigations with "flying colors" and that the SEC had found no inaccuracies in its audited reporting and no misappropriation of funds.
And so what was the motive for legal actions that have cost Unicoin's investors their opportunity to profit from their investments?
In the firm's initial response to the SEC accusations, attorneys noted that Unicoin's investors knew they were buying rights to a next-generation cryptocurrency backed by a U.S. company with equity stakes in high-growth "unicorn" companies and a portfolio of world-class real estate that enabled its coins to have intrinsic value. They also knew the risks involved.
What they might not have anticipated was that Gensler's SEC would block the company's planned September 2024 initial coin offering (ICO) and thus sabotaged Unicoin's ability to complete the agreed-upon real estate transactions that provided the collateral for the Unicoin Rights Certificates.
They did not foresee that the SEC would rob them of their return on investment.
One would think that newly installed SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins would have tossed the case against Unicoin long ago. After all, President Trump on his first day in office pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who had been sentenced to life in prison in 2015. Trump said "the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics" who engaged in lawfare against him.
In a relatively short time frame, the Atkins SEC dismissed cases against Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Opensea, and Uniswap. The decision to drop the lawsuit against Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao ended one of the last remaining crypto enforcement actions brought by the agency – just eight days after the SEC announced its case against Unicoin.
In August, the SEC and Ripple Labs announced they were ending their longstanding legal battle, in which the agency had accused Ripple of selling its XRP token as an unregistered security.
And when President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao in October, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims."
That campaign severely damaged the U.S. reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation, she added.
Leavitt concluded her statement proclaiming that "the Biden Administration's war on crypto is over."
Except it isn't - Not to Unicoin's investors and principals.
Neither Atkins nor Sacks nor anyone else in the Trump Administration has explained why Unicoin has been singled out for the heavy hand of the SEC.
While Konanykhin ponders how his company's support for the Trump crypto agenda – and their role modeling the right way to submit to regulatory oversight – Moschini found time to praise the administration for the GENIUS Act, which creates a regulatory framework the lack of which had been a big deterrent to the growth of the token economy in the United States.
"We created a token that is not issued. We swapped rights to receive the token when it is issued, in exchange for real estate, equity in companies, and other tangible assets. We did it following all the rules," she said.
Alex and I are "extremely committed to democratizing access to wealth creation," she says. "That means giving people around the world access to investment opportunities that were previously limited to accredited investors."
One can understand, given the Biden Administration's disdain for currencies not under control of the Federal Reserve, Gensler's relentless pursuit of a company intent on forcing the creation of a proper legal framework for cryptocurrencies.
But why is the Trump Administration continuing Gensler's war against its own ally?
