SEC Chairman Gary Gensler says that SEC has a role to play in crypto space to “protect the public from fraud and manipulation”.
In a conversation with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer, Gary Gensler said, “we at the SEC are technology neutral, but we’re anything but public policy natural.”
The SEC Chair pointed out that crypto “is a little less than two trillion dollars of assets, a valuation in a crypto currencies. If you wish or crypto the tokens of bitcoin and all the other tokens a is a highly investable asset.”
Gensler said that tens of millions of people around the globe have chosen to put some of their savings into this space, and so it’s every bit is important to have investor protection for crypto exchanges, for the lending platforms where people are transacting, buying and selling crypto tokens and have appropriate disclosure about the tokens themselves and protect the public from fraud and manipulation … and that’s really what we’re looking at.
He stressed that the SEC has a role to play as well as other agencies. He mentioned that the SEC has a role to play simply “because congress painted with a broad brush … if you’re raising money from the public and the public is anticipating some profit based on based on the efforts of those folks raising the money that comes within the definitions of security and the securities laws.”
Gensler said that many tokens are nothing but securities and exchanges need to follow securities laws for transactions related to those tokens.
“It’s kind of straight-forward congress saw that was an opportunity to mislead the public to just sell on to sell a sham transaction to the public could make a decision,” he said.
Gensler, who taught blockchain at MIT, said, “the basic bargain the public gets to decide on their investments as long as those promoters raising money are giving full and fair disclosure and there’s basic laws about protecting against fraud.”