Gary Gensler was the CFTC chair from 2009 to 2014. Now President-elect Joe Biden wanted Gensler’s rules-driven approach for the SEC.
As per the report that cited two unnamed sources, President-elect Joe Biden will appoint Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler will replace Acting SEC Chair Michael Piwowar; Jay Clayton, who served as chair from May 2017, stepped down on December 23.
Gensler will take acting SEC Chair Michael Piwowar; Jay Clayton, who served from May 2017, stepped down last December 23.
As chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during former President Obama’s term, Gensler was closely involved with cleaning up the 2008 Financial Crisis.
Under the Dodd-Frank law, passed in 2010, the CFTC gained oversight of derivatives. Gensler relished the CFTC’s expanded powers, which have drawn the ire of large banks. In November 2013, The Wall Street Journal named Gensler “a tenacious regulator who pushed for stricter rules governing the multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market.”
As the SEC chair, Gensler takes on an agency that has often marginalized cryptocurrency issues, although it occasionally brings lawsuits against participants in unregistered securities sales. It recently sued Ripple and two of its executives in association with sales of XRP, the 3rd largest crypto asset by market cap.
Commissioner Hester Peirce has called on the agency to abide by market innovators for many times now. In 2019, she called for a “safe harbor” for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. Her approach will allow a token that may start as security to evolve into a non-security or commodity.
She might get somewhere with Gensler. Peirce has emphasized that many entrepreneurs want clear rules. Gensler is a guy that lives by the rules. He also had some exposure to cryptocurrency. In 2019, Gensler, who has taught about Bitcoin at MIT, wrote about blockchain tech:
“Shared blockchain applications might help jumpstart multiparty network solutions in fields that historically have been fragmented or resilient to change. Even in this slightly less ambitious form—acting as an innovative irritant to incumbents and traditional technologies—cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have already prompted the real change and can continue to do so.”
It is not to suggest that Gensler is a Bitcoin maximalist; he is both knowledgeable and driven by a craving for clear rules.
The cryptocurrency faces even worse than that.
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