The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, suddenly suggested that all cryptocurrencies, except Bitcoin (BTC), must be viewed as securities. What does this mean for international crypto investors and crypto miners? Is his statement a game changer in terms of ongoing red tape to protect ownership rights to keep and mine cryptos? So far it looks extremely unlikely to be the case.

The investigation into the manipulation and false claims of the infamous bankrupt crypto exchange FTX seemed to let the genie out of the bottle in terms of SEC’s regulatory activity. The subsequent probes into various peculiar, but hardly illegal, actions of the Binance crypto exchange were remembered by many users for their abruptness and stringency. That was followed by regulatory restrictions and even injunctions on a number of well-settled stablecoins, culminating in a ban on the mining of the native Binance BUSD token, which put the entire Paxos ecosystem on the brink of survival.

Nearly eight years after Ethereum transformed into the most popular DeFi ecosystem and became the world's top crypto-funding currency, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, the Securities and Exchange Commission declared it illegal per se.

It is doubtful, however, that behind the rigorous SEC inspections and restrictive actions are some roadmaps for its future relevant steps. Ethereum (ETH) was born in the midst of the creation of cryptocurrencies based on the emergence of the new industry – more precisely, on June 30, 2015, and at that time no legislative act of the world was able to elaborate definitions, let alone frameworks – to tap into the ten emerging new industry.

Accordingly, the logic suggests that it is not the task of the crypto industry to “fit itself” into the definition of the legislative category, but, on the contrary, it is high time for lawmaking to expand its conservative framework and overhaul the existing limitations and extend them to accommodate the decentralized financial system. We understand that if we follow the natural logic, then, in fact, the SEC should relinquish itself from the supervision of crypto and declare that this financial expertise and working tools are not sufficient to follow the matter.

In this respect, we must admit that initially Gensler acted like this: when congressmen ordered the SEC to create a system of supervision and oversight for stablecoins, Gensler attempted to distance himself from the initiative as he was well aware that his personal efforts may lead to nowhere: in the absence of other specifically established government agencies suitable to overseeing digital finance matters, the lawmakers obligated exactly Gensler - in fact, under the fear of the possible redundancy from his high office – he began, slowly but surely – the "big cleanup". Now it’s the right time for the global crypto community to start drawing its “red lines”.