The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, says the securities regulator is working with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on crypto regulation. In addition, he said the SEC is “trying to work with various crypto platforms, exchanges, lending platforms” to ensure investor protection.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler on Crypto Regulation
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler talked about cryptocurrency regulation in an interview with Bloomberg this week. “We do have a broad agenda and crypto is part of that agenda,” he began.
Commenting specifically on crypto regulation, the SEC boss affirmed that “The agency is really just looking out for investors,” emphasizing that “many of these tokens have the attributes of securities.” He further explained, “They are raising money from the public, and the public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others.”
Gensler described:
We brought a number of actions. We’re trying to work with various crypto platforms, exchanges, lending platforms … to get investor protection for the public.
“If you are a platform and you have 75, or a hundred, or 5,000 tokens on the platform, the possibilities are that a number of them, and maybe many of them, are what’s called a security,” Gensler stressed.
A recent report shows that the SEC has taken at least 97 enforcement actions on crypto companies and individuals so far. Gensler has also said that crypto is one of the top priorities at the SEC.
The SEC chairman explained: “The SEC is going to try to pursue investor protection and if that means bringing greater enforcement actions, then we’ll do that. But it would be better to have these platforms come in, work with us, and come under the securities law.”
He insisted: “The laws are pretty clear as laid out in the 1930s, and we have an ability to work with these exchanges using various authorities” to tailor some of the existing rules for the crypto industry. He admitted that crypto platforms do not operate like traditional exchanges.
The SEC chairman further noted that “it would be helpful to work with Congress on some things.” Nonetheless, he said, “unless Congress said otherwise, we have to ensure there’s investor protection in this space.” Gensler continued:
We are going to work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where there are some commodity tokens. While many of these are securities, some may be under their remit. We work together as two federal agencies.
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Kevin Helms
A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.
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