The owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball club, Mark Cuban, criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the wrong approach to regulating the cryptocurrency industry.

Shark Tank star Mark Cuban commented on recent SEC lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance. According to the billionaire, the agency prefers to sue rather than regulate. Therefore, he urged the SEC to recognize the fact that cryptocurrencies are another technology that will succeed or fail only depending on its merits.

“The SEC has chosen the wrong path to regulate the industry. The regulator is also prone to make mistakes, and in this case, he chose the wrong course,” Kuban said.

While many participants in the cryptocurrency sector are demanding that the SEC provide clear rules that must be followed by industry companies, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly stated that existing laws are enough to regulate cryptocurrencies. You just need to come to the office and register, Gensler said. Cuban considered his statement arrogant, doubting that the current regulatory framework is capable of covering the entire cryptocurrency industry.

The billionaire added that if the SEC had taken the approach that is used in Japan, then American investors would not have lost money, referring to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. By establishing clear rules for separating client and exchange funds, as well as requirements for wallets, such losses would not have occurred.

“Japan has made it clear that FTX is not a crypto issue, but a scam. The best way to prevent cryptocurrency scams is to work out investor protection rules and introduce mandatory registration. Any unregistered company de facto breaks the rules, so it must be closed, ”the billionaire argues.

Cuban previously said that the FTX fiasco resembled the collapse of a conventional bank, as it involved violating the standard financial rules that apply to the banking business.