Gurbir Grewal, director of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Enforcement, reportedly said that the entire crypto industry was “built on non-compliance,” leading to enforcement actions.

According to a Reuters report on June 16, Grewal he spoke at an event hosted by the law firm Lowenstein Sandler and the Rutgers University School of Law in New York, which also featured Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad. The SEC’s director of enforcement reportedly said the commission was working “thoughtfully and incrementally” on actions related to the crypto space, but that approach failed to address what the regulator believed were unregistered securities offerings.

“Even if you’ve come up with a bespoke set of rules, you’ve got an entire industry where the ethos is built around non-compliance,” Grewal said. “Usually you would see a match as well, but we don’t see that in this space, so we had to change strategies.”

Related: Requiring DEXes to register with the SEC like other exchanges is “impossible,” says Coinbase CLO

The SEC and Coinbase — along with many other exchanges, including Binance — are at odds with the commission issued Wells’ announcement to the crypto firm in March. Coinbase followed suit in May reply to his previously saved writ of mandamus in an effort for the SEC to provide clear rules for digital assets. SEC he responded with his own lawsuit against a crypto exchange on June 6, with several tokens labeled as unregistered securities.

The outcome of the case could have far-reaching implications for crypto firms that want to legally operate in the United States. Lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee have scheduled a June 22 hearing to discuss SEC oversight.

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