SEC Chair Gary Gensler had a TV interview today, where he continued to assert his anti-crypto stance. He called the industry “rife with bad actors” and “built around noncompliance,” showing the same harshness as ever.
Gensler claimed that his career as a financial regulator actually harshened his previous ambiguous stance, but he hasn’t softened it since being ousted.
Gensler After the SEC
A lot of descriptions could apply to Gary Gensler, the lame-duck Chair of the SEC, but nobody can accuse him of switching beliefs easily. Since Trump won the recent Presidential election, Gensler announced that he would resign on Inauguration Day. His “farewell speech” resolutely defended his staunch anti-crypto positions, and he’s doubling down two months later:
“This field is rife with bad actors. The public knows a lot about Bitcoin, which is [most] of the market value, and then there’s everything else. These 10 or 15,000 projects…many of them will not survive,” Gensler claimed.
Gensler began his televised interview discussing his positive experiences at the SEC, and his willingness to stand firm against public scrutiny. From there, the conversation obviously moved to one of his greatest critics: the US crypto industry. He claimed that he’s made strides in increasing legal compliance, but described it as a particularly daunting task.
“Everything in the markets trades on a mixture of fundamentals and sentiment. I’ve never seen a field that’s so much wrapped up in sentiment, and so little on fundamentals! It’s a field that’s built up around noncompliance,” he added.
In a particularly surprising note, Gensler paid special attention to SEC efforts to take down high-profile crypto criminals. He referred to Sam Bankman-Fried, Do Kwon, and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao as criminals on the same level, despite the extreme variation in their acts. CZ, for example, was only sentenced to four months, while SBF received 25 years.
Gensler also claimed that his tenure with the SEC actually hardened his anti-crypto attitudes. His previous job before this appointment was in academia, and he stated that he continually tried to entertain pro-crypto arguments in a learning environment. After becoming a federal regulator, however, Gensler found a responsibility to crack down on offenders.
Ultimately, whatever vision Gensler held for the SEC as a crypto regulator is all over. Trump will replace him with an industry ally at the start of his term, and the CFTC Chair will resign simultaneously.
Nonetheless, there is still something admirable in Gensler’s outlook. He found himself a dedicated enemy of crypto, and failure hasn’t softened this viewpoint.
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