What SEC chairman Gary Gensler told Congress about crypto

Solana market updates and crashes

Bitcoin price returned to around $ 47,000 yesterday, a slight increase over the previous day. Altcoins also increased slightly. The SOL, which has grown for many days, has reached the level of USD 158.

However, as reported by Solana Status, Solana Mainnet Beta saw a massive surge in transactions, causing transaction congestion and peaking at 400,000 TPS (transactions / second). This increase could be due to the sale of Grape Protocol tokens.

The number of incidents frozen the Solana network for 15 hours. Transactions flooded and waited to be processed, and the lack of prioritization on the network caused the network to start splitting. This division leads to excessive memory consumption, causing some nodes to go offline. Although engineers across the Solana ecosystem have tried to stabilize the network, to no avail.

To solve the above problem, the programming community is accepting network restarts, new versions, and instructions on the Discord forums. To date, Solana has successfully rebooted the mainnet beta after upgrading to 1.6.25. Dapps, block explorer and support systems as well as full functionality have been restored.

This is not the first time Solana has had problems, had the same problem last week and also had a problem in December. With the ability to process up to 400,000 transactions per second, but the system is still overloaded, it turns out that there is huge interest in using the Solana network.

Solana’s version of Mainet is still young, so mistakes are inevitable. In order to achieve high processing speeds, Solana also had to forego decentralization, the security of the network or the low fees that made the network more vulnerable to attack. In development, however, these errors are overcome and gradually improved.

Other networks recently crashed, like Cardano. Or networks that have been around for many years and that have had such a difficult early period behind them. But how the Solana community reacts will greatly influence the future development of the network.

The SEC’s position in the hearing

The SEC’s most recent hearing with the US Congress took place. However, the main content that will be discussed relates to the SEC’s requirements for color and gender harmony. Or topics related to climate and diversity.

Some of the crypto issues mentioned still revolve around familiar issues of crypto legislation.

Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican advocate for crypto markets, urged SEC Chairman Gensler early in his hearing whether stablecoins meet the definition of a security in the interests of investors.

Mr. Pat Toomey also asked if the SEC would encourage the development of the technology market. At the same time, he criticized the SEC for abuse of power in deciding which coins are securities without giving the company specific reasons or laws. Or lawsuits in which crypto companies are sued and accused of securities with no specific explanation.

The above, said MP Pat Toomey, is not fair and when companies and exchanges want to discuss they are not given information or are based on a specific law.

Crypto market naysayers like Senator Elizabeth Warren said last week’s crypto price drop and subsequent setbacks highlight the need for the SEC to regulate crypto exchanges.

She also mentioned BTC’s bearish correction of over $ 10,000 last week. She said retail investors lose money when prices fall. At the same time, they have to sell and withdraw, but cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase are temporarily closed due to congestion and nobody protection. Or if investors appeal about Defi, the NFT fees are too high, there is no special additional charge to protect investors.

The SEC chairman also mentioned at the hearing, saying that stablecoins were securities but made no specific statement. And Coinbase Exchange is included as a specific example of the bad points. There are some tokens on Coinbase that could be securities, he said, but the exchange is not registered with the SEC.

This hearing may be due to complaints about transaction fees or current questions about crypto. These matters will be referred to the SEC. However, the SEC chairman has said that the SEC is the regulator of the stock market and a place of law enforcement. To have specific and clear law, Congress must review and pass it, but the SEC does not have that power.

In a separate meeting, Fidelity Investments called on the SEC to approve its Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, listing the merits of an idea the regulator has been slow to accept.

The company Fidelity also cited the reason that the demand for crypto investments from customers with crypto is increasing. And the Bitcoin ETF is already active in other countries.

It can be seen that the SEC is facing pressure from all sides, both from Congress and from corporations, investment firms, and crypto firms. There is no specific law, so the SEC has chosen to focus on its powers and needs new legislation from Congress. The crypto market is largely unaffected by this hearing.

Some other information:

• Ukraine has legalized BTC. The country has clear laws on crypto and BTC is also government protected and applies related laws like trading and paying taxes. Many sources predict that Ukraine is likely to be the next country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal currency.

• The Laotian government allows the trading and mining of cryptocurrencies and is ending a three-year ban. There are six companies in the country that have been allowed to experiment with mining and selling cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin in the country, while the relevant ministries draft laws to control their use.

• The governor of the Swedish central bank says Bitcoin could crash and is not a “good measure of value”. To date, Bitcoin has really scared governments or central banks that they still don’t like BTC or crypto.