Jason @ 01:01:56Ambiguous
marketsgovernment
In future SEC challenges related to crypto‑sector M&A deals, companies will increasingly reject settlement offers and instead litigate those cases in court, making aggressive legal defense the norm for such M&A transactions.
And I think that's what M&A is going to happen. All M&A, it's like well now the settlement is off the table. We're going to fight.View on YouTube
Explanation
Available post‑July 2023 evidence does not clearly confirm or refute Jason’s specific prediction about SEC challenges to crypto‑sector M&A deals.
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Very few (if any) SEC enforcement actions have targeted crypto M&A transactions themselves.
- SEC enforcement in 2023–2025 has focused on crypto lending programs, unregistered offerings, exchanges/brokers, custody failures, and fraud (e.g., Terraform Labs, Rari Capital, Galois Capital, Mango DAO, Silvergate, Abra), almost all unrelated to mergers or acquisitions.(sec.gov)
- Corporate filings show crypto‑related business combinations (SPACs and other deals involving blockchain/digital‑asset businesses) proceeding through normal disclosure and review, not being singled out by SEC enforcement or blocked via litigated challenges.(skadden.com) Because there are essentially no clear SEC enforcement test cases centered on crypto M&A, Jason’s claim about how such cases will be handled (settle vs. fight) cannot be directly tested.
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General SEC‑crypto pattern: settlements remain common, though more firms do fight in non‑M&A contexts.
- Aggregate SEC data for FY 2023–2024 show hundreds of enforcement actions, with only a small fraction going to trial; most—including crypto matters—are resolved through settlements or consent orders.(sec.gov)
- At the same time, several major crypto firms (Coinbase, Robinhood, Crypto.com, Consensys and others) have become more willing to litigate or pre‑emptively sue the SEC over classification and registration issues, and some investigations/lawsuits have been dropped without settlements—indicating a more aggressive legal posture generally, but again not in the specific M&A‑challenge setting Jason described.(politico.com)
Because (a) there are almost no SEC enforcement cases squarely about crypto‑sector M&A deals to observe, and (b) overall SEC–crypto enforcement still largely relies on settlements outside that niche, the prediction about M&A‑related SEC challenges cannot be cleanly validated or falsified. That makes the outcome ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.