Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Monday, August 12th, and today we are talking about why the SEC is not done with us yet.

Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord.

You can find a link in the show notes or get to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, welcome to another week. Today we kick off with a

story around the SEC and their continued attacks on crypto. And one would be forgiven for thinking

that after all of the Ls that they had recently been handed, plus the upcoming presidential election, maybe Gensler and his crew would just kind of slink

off and try to stop engaging. Well, apparently that is not the case. According to reports

from DL News, at least three venture capital firms have been subpoenaed by the SEC over the past

year. The first page of the subpoena was viewed by DL News and referred

to an investigation into, quote, certain crypto asset offering intermediaries. The subpoenas

asked the VC firms to hand over any contracts related to every token deal they have been involved

with. One crypto lawyer working at a VC firm that has not received a subpoena said,

it's an overarching fishing expedition and an incredibly expensive one.

Others are a little more credulous, with securities lawyer Alicia Cobre, for example, stating,

it's a natural additional enforcement area that the SEC would consider pursuing.

The theory of the investigation is assumed to be about VCs acting as, quote,

statutory underwriters rather than token investors.

A statutory underwriter

is a dealer who buys securities with an intent to distribute them to retail traders. At the moment,

token deals in the U.S. are largely done using SEC exemptions that allow a crypto project to sell

tokens to accredited investors. If VCs are taking deals with the sole intention of selling

...