The reporting of crypto scams in the United States is currently handled by a patchwork of agencies that should be streamlined to better protect consumers, says Coinbase chief security officer Philip Martin.

“It’s a very fragmented ecosystem. Where do you report these things? Well, you go here, you go there, you go somewhere else,” Martin told Cointelegraph at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

“I’d love to see that addressed and really brought under one umbrella, and that then helps us get a better idea of the magnitude of the problem.”

“That then helps drive resources from the whole federal government to do more to address some of the underlying causes, he added.

The US has dozens of federal and state-level agencies that handle reports of financial and internet crimes, one of which is the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which gives victims a way to report cybercrime.

Martin said that crypto scam victims are reporting to authorities, but it “feels like they’re screaming into the void to like IC3 or some of the government reporting websites.”

He added the various reporting sites should be consolidated “into a single reporting system that not only has all the data in one place but that also, in a perfect world, gives victims some visibility.”

On an earlier panel regarding online fraud, in which Martin took part, retired FBI agent Roger Campbell said many victims of crypto romance scams search the internet for how to report the crime and “all kinds of information comes up.”

“It’s kind of frustrating,” he said. Campbell gave the example of the UK as a country with an “awesome reporting system” where one portal is used to report all crimes, and victims can follow the status of their complaints.

FBI’s Roger Campbell (center left) on a panel with Coinbase’s Philip Martin (center right). Other panelists include former Twitter safety lead Yoel Roth (right) and MSNBC reporter Mackenzie Sigalos (left). Source: Turner Wright / Cointelegraph

“You report something to the IC3, you never hear anything back 99% of the time,” he added. “It gets frustrating again for the victim. They almost feel victimized again.”

Related: ‘Victim-blaming’ Americans can deter crypto scams reporting — Regulator 

Coinbase’s Martin told Cointelegraph that scams have a “lag in reporting,” and the way that attackers carry out schemes today won’t be known for months.

“A scam may have happened six months ago, and we might hear about it tomorrow,” he said.

Another difficulty in policing crypto scams, according to Martin, is that they’re “by and large” conducted from outside the US in countries including Myanmar and Laos, where “it can be hard for law enforcement to reach into those areas and really sort of strangle the stuff at the root. “

He said combatting crypto scams should focus on international relations and the US, “making it a priority to work with governments around the world so that there’s no safe haven for these scammers.”

Meanwhile, on March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation said it received over 2,600 complaints last year and found seven types of scams it hadn’t yet discovered, including crypto mining, gaming, jobs and giveaway scams.

Magazine: Influencers shilling memecoin scams face severe legal consequences 

Additional reporting by Turner Wright.

A proposed rule change pushing for some crypto firms to register as exchanges could be abandoned under a new directive from the acting chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. 

During a March 10 speech at the Washington Conference of the Institute of International Bankers, acting SEC Chairman Mark Uyeda said he had “asked SEC staff for options on abandoning” part of the proposed changes that would expand regulation of alternative trading systems (ATSs) to include crypto firms.

“In light of the significant negative public comment received on the definition of exchange with respect to crypto, I have asked SEC staff for options on abandoning that part of the proposal,” he said.

“In my view, it was a mistake for the commission to link together regulation of the Treasury markets with a heavy-handed attempt to tamp down the crypto market.”

Uyeda says the rule was initially crafted in 2020 under former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to establish more straightforward rules for alternative trading systems; the guidance was intended to mainly impact US Treasury market participants.

Source: US Securities and Exchange Commission

However, when it fell to former SEC Chair Gary Gensler to implement the rule, he took a “very different direction” by expanding the list beyond just ATSs.

“Rather than focusing on the narrow issues relating to Government Securities ATSs, a new iteration of the rule was proposed in 2022 that would redefine the regulatory definition of an exchange,” Uyeda said.

“The new definition of the term exchange included communications protocols without clearly defining what that term meant. Effectively, the vastly expanded definition of an exchange would have picked up various protocols used with respect to crypto assets,” he added.

Related: Coinbase finds flawed analysis in SEC’s proposed exchange definition

Gensler’s time at the SEC came with an aggressive regulatory stance toward crypto. 

He brought upward of 100 regulatory actions against firms from 2021 until his resignation on Jan. 20, the same day as Donald Trump started his second term as US president. Trump had promised to fire Gensler if elected. 

After Genlers’ resignation, the SEC has since taken a new friendlier approach toward crypto. A growing number of firms facing legal action from the regulator have had their cases dismissed, including crypto exchange Gemini on Feb. 26, Kraken on March 3 and crypto trading firm Cumberland DRW on March 4.

Meanwhile, the agency has also launched a crypto task force dedicated to developing a framework for digital assets led by crypto-friendly Commissioner Hester Peirce. 

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered

The Trump administration may be intentionally creating uncertainty in the stock markets to corner Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, according to a market commentator. 

Doing so increases the likelihood that the US won’t need to refinance around $7 trillion in debt it owes over the next few months, Bitcoin commentator Anthony Pompliano said in a March 10 X post.

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent are “taking matters into their own hands; they’re crashing asset prices in an attempt to force Jerome Powell to cut interest rates,” said Pompliano, who serves as the founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management and host of The Pomp Podcast.

In late January, Powell announced the Fed was not lowering interest rates from the current target range of 4.25% to 4.5% despite calls from Trump to do so.

Pompliano said the recent market panic has been driven in part by Trump’s tariffs — and has been used to create a more favorable bond market while lowering the 10-year Treasury yield.

He noted that the 10-year Treasury yield is already down from nearly 4.8% in January to 4.21% now — a sign that Trump’s purported strategy is “heading in the right direction.”

Source: Thomas Kralow

Whether Pompliano’s theory is correct or not, the stock market has been tanking of late, and crypto has been hit even harder.

Broad market index funds such as State Street’s Standard & Poor’s 500 index fund (SPY) fell 2.66% on March 10 alone, while the Nasdaq-100% fell 3.8%, Google Finance data shows.

Both indexes are down 7.32% and 10.7% over the last month, while Bitcoin (BTC) is down 27.4% from its $108,786 all-time high, and over $1.2 trillion has been wiped from the cryptocurrency market cap since Dec. 17.

If the stock market continues to tank, it will come down to a “who blinks first” contest between Trump and Powell, Pompliano said.

While Trump hasn’t confirmed such a strategy, Pompliano pointed to a Fox News interview on March 9 where Trump said: “Nobody ever gets rich when the interest rates are high because people can’t borrow money.”

Pompliano added that lowering interest rates would also benefit American consumers:

“The big goal, get interest rates down, and that will lead to more economic activity, thanks to access to cheap capital. Give the people cheap capital and they’ll go and do things with it.”

Related: Bitcoin dips to $80K in ‘ugly start,’ could retest key resistance: Hayes

CME FedWatch, a tool used to measure expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate change, has tipped a 96% probability that the target rate will remain between 4.25% and 4.50% following the Federal Reserve’s next meeting on March 19. 

However, it’s near 50-50 odds for the target rate to be lowered in the Federal Reserve’s following meeting on May 7.

The Federal Reserve typically avoids lowering interest rates when inflation is high, as one of its primary objectives is to maintain price stability.

However, a Trump-inflicted recession, or “Trumpcession,” as some call it, could force America’s top bank to start cutting again.

Magazine: Meet lawyer Max Burwick — ‘The ambulance chaser of crypto’