Partner Keith Miller was quoted in “The Brewing Turf War in Crypto Regulation Shows Congress Must Step in, Experts Say,” an article in MarketWatch, regarding U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler asking Congress to give the SEC explicit authority to regulate crypto exchanges.

Keith, also a former SEC enforcement lawyer and partner at Perkins Coie told MarketWatch that while the speech showed Gensler’s ambitions toward crypto regulation, it also laid bare that the regulator does not have the resources to vigorously oversee the industry.

“His call for more resources is certainly telling,” Keith said, though he also said the speech signaled “an increase in enforcement activity in the digital asset space, particularly in DeFi.”

“The SEC won’t tell them and so they’re left in a catch 22, which stifles innovation,” Keith said. “The industry has been clamoring for legislation to clear things up and so until that happens we’re going to continue to see attempts to define whether a digital asset is a security through enforcement.”