The 6 Big Takeaways From SEC Chair Clayton's Crypto Remarks

The tea leaves were swirling Tuesday after Jay Clayton, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, dropped some hints about what regulators in the United States will do in the crypto space in the coming months and years.

Clayton gave a fireside chat in front of a packed room at CoinDesk's Consensus: Invest event in Manhattan yesterday afternoon.

While Clayton made it clear that he has given cryptocurrency a lot of thought over the last year, there was still plenty to read between the lines, including his thoughts on the exchange ecosystem and the question of when ICO-derived tokens count as securities.

Following the on-stage conversation, three longtime experts in crypto law dissected the nuances of what Clayton said during a taping of CoinDesk Live.

While this panel of experts touched on a range of issues, there were some major takeaways to glean from Clayton's talk.

Clayton made it very clear that he did not trust existing crypto exchanges to prevent price manipulation.

The panel noted that Clayton seemed to hint that some kind of move to get bitcoin onto a regulated exchange may be underway, with panelists pointing to remarks made earlier in the day by New York Stock Exchange Chairman Jeff Sprecher.

To further tame crypto, Clayton also made it clear that anti-money laundering protections had to be put in place for crypto trading.

ICO-funded startups should go see the SEC, ASAP. Repeating a theme Clayton stressed in his talk, Cohen argued it would behoove crypto startups that raised money in 2017 and early 2018 to go to the regulators now.

Broadly speaking, Clayton argued from the stage that the SEC is happy to help crypto startups in the U.S. find a way to get in compliance with the law, but our panel of regulatory experts said that, in practice, this turns out to be much more difficult than the chairman made it sound.