17 Crypto Exchanges Pledge Safe Markets, Cooperation With Regulators

Solidus Labs, Coinbase and several other big names in crypto announced Monday (Feb. 7) that they are forming a Crypto Market Integrity Coalition (CMIC) to work towards a future with safer markets.

The CMIC launch is a pledge focused on making a “fair digital asset marketplace” which can fight against market abuse and manipulation, while also promoting public and regulatory confidence for the new asset class. According to the CMIC, it plans to recruit other digital asset companies to its group.

It also plans to take additional steps in the future, including “advancing training programs, sharing insights and research, dialoguing with regulators, and considering data-sharing and shared-surveillance frameworks that can address crypto and decentralized finance’s unique cross-market supervision challenges.”

Amid a difficult regulatory landscape, crypto companies have also been looking for approval from an exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding real bitcoin, although the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is concerned with possible market manipulation and fraud.

“The public and regulators have made their concerns clear, and the pledge’s initial goal is to bring unity and action at an industry level” across centralized finance (CeFi), decentralized finance (DeFi) and all digital assets, Asaf Meir, co-founder and CEO of Solidus Labs, said in the announcement.

PYMNTS reported that moving forward, the opposition to bitcoin ETFs might not be as strong as it had been in the past.

Related: SEC’s Request Suggests that Opposition to Bitcoin ETF May Be Fading

The SEC has requested public comments on a spot bitcoin ETF proposal, a report says, wanting comments about a proposal by Grayscale Investments to convert Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, a public company which has sold shares based on its bitcoin holdings to investors that are both institutional and accredited since 2013.

The report notes that there’s been a substantial increase in interest in crypto in the last year. Research says around 16% of the U.S. public has owned it by the end of 2021.

An ETF would allow mainstream investors to put bitcoin in their portfolios without having to worry about its custody — a hang-up for people not familiar with crypto’s workings.

In the past several months, the SEC has rejected several spot exchange traded funds that would track the price of bitcoin directly. Instead, the organization was more interested in tracking its futures.