Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, has just been interviewed on CNBC Squawk Box and continues to maintain the line that most of crypto is a security, without providing the clarity as to exactly why.
Gary Gensler, an extremely influential figure in the world of policing finance, who wants to regulate crypto tightly, has spoken of introducing a middle man into crypto projects such as decentralised finance platforms, and tells college students to save their fiat currency.
When asked by the interviewer whether he believed that Ethereum, like Ripple, should be viewed as a security, Gensler replied in a jocular tone. He said:
I’m the chair of a 5-member commission that’s also a civil law enforcement agency, and so we don’t get involved in these types of public forums talking about any one project, one possible circumstance, and give legal advice over the airwaves that way.
However, he did then go on to clarify what he saw as infringing security laws:
If you’re raising money from the public and the public is in anticipation of profit based upon that promoter’s, sponsor’s, that group’s, efforts, that’s within the securities laws.
Gensler went on to say that congress wanted to protect the investing public so that they had full and fair information in order to protect them from fraud and scams.
The SEC chairman did acknowledge that crypto currencies were “new” and that there were novel ways of trading and transacting in them, but he still believed that the old ways of labelling assets, that go back to the 1930s, were still perfectly adequate.
He kept referring back to “public protections” as one of the main reasons for his stance, not surprising given that this is supposed to be one of the 3 main pillars of the SEC.
The upshot of the interview is that Gensler still refuses to be drawn on how the SEC views Ripple as a security, yet will not point out any differences between that and Ethereum or Bitcoin, that would allow CEOs of other crypto platforms to understand whether their project was also in violation of the law.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
