SEC awards over $1 billion in rewards to whistleblowers

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“The assistance that whistleblowers provide is crucial to the SEC’s ability to enforce the rules of the road for our capital markets.” – Gary Gensler

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced that it had awarded over $1 billion in rewards to whistleblowers since the formation of its whistleblower program in 2012. This includes a recent reward of over $110 million, the second highest in the program’s history.

The program exists to give whistleblowers an avenue to report securities violations and financial crime anonymously. The rewards are funded from proceeds the SEC collects through enforcement actions.

Where whistleblowers in digital currency space should go

Anyone who understands the digital currency market knows it is rife with crime, corruption, and illegal security offerings disguised as new and innovative digital assets. In most cases, this is just old wine in new bottles, and after years of being bamboozled by all the buzzwords, regulators are finally catching up and beginning to enforce the rules. The SEC has already taken action against Ripple and several other entities operating in the industry, and there appears to be a lot more coming down the pipe.

So, where should you go if you have an anonymous tip related to the digital currency industry? Since the SEC is clearly interested in enforcing on companies and organizations within the space, there’s nothing to stop you from participating in the bounty program outlined above.

CoinGeek also has its very own Crime Bounty Program. After an attempted illegal reorg attack on the BSV blockchain, CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre created the program to reward whistleblowers who provide tips that lead to arrests and convictions of those intent on criminally harming the BSV ecosystem. While honest nodes are perfectly capable of defending the Bitcoin blockchain, the attacks are nonetheless time-consuming to deal with, albeit futile.

With the sheer number of scams, Ponzi schemes, and illegal security offerings in the digital currency industry, millions are up for grabs for those willing to step forward and do the right thing.

But snitches get stitches, right?

Unfortunately, this anti-law attitude that’s more fitting for criminal cartels and street gangs permeates the digital currency ecosystem today. Many would feel uncomfortable reporting crime to the SEC or any other enforcement agency because of this. Yet, upon deeper analysis, none of the innovations and technological advancements we see in this space would be possible without law and order, including Bitcoin.

First, as Dr. Craig Wright has rightly pointed out, Bitcoin is the exact opposite of what BTC proponents and the criminals that currently run the space want it to be. Understanding it better helps to see the force for good that Bitcoin can be in the world. How about a world without corruption and which makes schemes like Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scam impossible? Doesn’t that sound better than digital gold and a small percentage of people getting rich by doing nothing?

Second, without law and law enforcement, no property rights are possible. While many would wish that code is law, it is not, and the law has a basis in morality, culture, and history developed over thousands of years. It’s important that basic laws such as property rights are upheld if there’s to be any digital currency industry at all, let alone anything else. Without them, no investment and hence no innovation can occur.

Lastly, anonymously reporting crimes and getting financially rewarded for doing so helps move the industry forward. The sooner we can weed out rogue players who get us all a bad name and attract negative press, and the sooner we can shift resources to focus on building legitimate projects that want to deliver value to the world, the better.

It’s time for the narrative to change

Thinking about it more, it’s easy to see that entities like the SEC and the CoinGeek Crime Bounty Program aren’t the bad guys in this story. There’s nothing wrong with using the law to protect yourself and your property; that’s what it’s there for. Those fighting to uphold some semblance of order are the light in the darkness that sees projects like Monero help the cancer of organized crime flourish, schemes like Tether pump and dump assets that burn innocent retail speculators, and organizations like the Ethereum Foundation dump hundreds of millions worth of tokens onto speculators at bull market peaks.

If you’re aware of any illegal activity in the space, don’t be ashamed to step forward, report it, and get paid for it. There’s a larger battle going on here between people who believe in civilization and a toxic blend of criminals/anarchists who want to burn it all down. If you can help to uphold one of the pillars of Western civilization, that being the law, why not do so? If you can get paid for it, that’s even better.

Have information on attacks on the BSV network? Send a tip via our contact page, and make sure to select “Report Crime” in the Topic section.