U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Atkins is one of the keynote speakers at the Digital Chamber’s DC Blockchain Summit next month, and the event’s main sponsor, Unicoin, is in a legal fight with the agency, alleging that the SEC chairman is being misled into perpetuating a legacy war against cryptocurrencies.
The CEO of Unicoin, which is the “platinum” sponsor of the summit, says his company cannot speak with SEC leaders due to the agency’s ongoing legal action against the crypto platform. In May of last year, the SEC sued the company and its executives, including CEO Alexander Konanykhin, accusing them of raising $100 million for tokens that were not backed by real estate in the way the company represented them to be.
Konanykhin said the legal dispute is being pursued by dishonest agency agents (former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s “henchmen”) who have deceived current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins. (The case may have begun during Gensler’s tenure, but the resulting lawsuit was filed last year under then-interim President Mark Uyeda.)
“We are prohibited from speaking to Atkins or other commissioners, so they have no way of knowing that they have been defrauded by ‘dirty cops,’ holdovers from Gensler’s war on cryptocurrencies,” Konanykhin wrote in a message to CoinDesk.
Unicoin executives may not be able to speak with Atkins, but the company is helping pay for the event at which Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce are the first two featured speakers on the summit website, on a list that also includes Konanykhin.
When asked about the confluence of Unicoin and its adversary agency at the upcoming summit, the organizers responded with a statement saying: “Businesses are coming to the Digital Chamber DC Summit because it is an opportunity to educate and build bridges.”
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the situation.
Konanykhin’s company has also tried to educate the SEC with a campaign that involves trucks driving through downtown Washington and passing by the agency, decorated with direct messages that include the sentiment: “The war on cryptocurrencies is NOT over.”
The CEO has been threading the needle with his harsh criticism of the SEC. He praised Atkins for “steadily repairing the damage to the cryptocurrency industry inflicted by his predecessor,” but insisted that the agency’s law enforcement staff is sabotaging Atkins by keeping up Gensler’s legal fight with the digital asset sector, even though the SEC dismissed or delayed the other major cryptocurrency enforcement cases pursued under Gensler.
Furthermore, the current securities fraud charges against Unicoin were filed last year, when Republican Commissioner Uyeda was deputy chairman. The lawsuit was approved by a committee that then included two Republicans and one Democrat, with no dissenting statements issued. But Konanykhin says law enforcement attorneys got the nod for approval, arguing that “rejection of a staff recommendation is the exception and not the rule.”
The political summit, one of the most prominent annual crypto events in Washington, features a code of conduct that calls for “a safe and welcoming environment that encourages open dialogue and the free expression of ideas.” While Konanykhin might want to tell Atkins that his law enforcement team “crudely concocted absurd charges against Unicoin and its executives,” the legal limitations against him will not allow for that open dialogue.
