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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler discussed the increasing importance for cryptocurrency trading platforms to register with the SEC so the agency could offer better investor protection and monitoring.
Gary Gensler Calls for Regulating Crypto Platforms
Speaking at The Digital Asset Compliance & Market Integrity Summit on Wednesday, the Chairman of The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, reiterated that cryptocurrency companies and exchanges will not be able to operate outside of regulatory oversight for much longer.
According to him, companies will have to start conducting business within regulatory frameworks soon. Cryptocurrency exchanges should be registered with the SEC just like traditional securities exchanges as the crypto market does not currently have sufficient investor protection, he argues.
“If you think there’s some reason that you can’t quite register as a full exchange…work with us. I think a better path for these platforms, these exchanges and lending platforms, is to work to get registered within the law," adding “Get registered, come within the investor protection remit, the appropriate anti-manipulation rules and the custody issues.”
Different Payment Systems
Gensler agreed that payments businesses, central banks and the private sector have started to think about payment systems differently due to the competition from decentralized forms of value transfer.
“Some people will call it currency but none of these projects have really taken on a full embodiment of a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. They have primarily been speculative stores of value.”
Gensler taught a blockchain course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also served as a co-director of Fintech@CSAIL, a research group that investigates disruptive technologies. Genler’s prior knowledge in decentralized tech caused the SEC to approve bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds, which have started trading in the US, but has not yet approved spot bitcoin ETFs.