TechFlow news — On February 27, Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, announced on social media that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has informed Gemini's legal team of its decision to terminate the investigation into the exchange and will not pursue enforcement action. This decision comes 699 days after the SEC initiated the investigation and 277 days after the issuance of a Wells Notice.
Winklevoss stated that while this marks another turning point in the "crypto war," it cannot make up for the damage the SEC has inflicted on Gemini, the broader industry, and the United States. He revealed that the SEC's investigation cost Gemini tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation. He questioned: "How many engineers have left or avoided the crypto industry due to regulatory crackdowns? How many projects never launched because founders and engineers were unwilling to navigate complex regulatory environments?"
Regarding future reforms, Winklevoss proposed three recommendations: first, requiring regulators to pay triple legal costs to investigated parties when launching investigations without clear rules in place; second, publicly firing regulatory staff involved in improper enforcement actions; and third, imposing lifetime bans on officials who abuse their power, prohibiting them from working at regulatory agencies again. He emphasized that unless such conduct carries real costs and consequences, similar incidents will recur, and called for continued efforts toward government reform to ensure such events do not happen again—neither in crypto nor in any emerging industry.
