Gary Gensler, a successful trader, professional shortsitter, author of a series of remarkable lectures at MIT on "The Potential of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain" and concurrently the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), compared the cryptocurrency industry to the American stock market of the 20th century, full of "hustlers and swindlers". Claiming that the world doesn't need crypto anymore, and that digital public fiat is enough.
Speaking at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange & Fintech Conference on June 8, Gensler said (https://www.rbc.ru/crypto/news/648319299a79473fc15abd11) that the passage of securities laws in 1933 and 1934 in the U.S. helped to curb stock market fraud. These same laws will also help "clean up" the cryptocurrency market.
"With widespread non-compliance with the law, it's honestly not surprising that we're seeing a lot of problems in these markets. We've seen this story before. It's reminiscent of what we had in the 1920s before the federal securities laws were introduced. Merchants, crooks, con artists, pyramid schemes. And the public was lining up in bankruptcy court," said the SEC chairman.
The SEC says that most cryptocurrencies fall under the definition of securities. And even if tokens have additional utility (which the cryptocurrency community cites to deny the regulator's position), that doesn't take "cryptocurrency is a security" out of the definition of an investment contract, Gensler said.
He explained that cryptocurrency exchanges must comply with securities laws, including the requirement to separate "exchange, broker-dealer and clearing functions." In his view, such separation "helps mitigate conflicts that can arise when such services are combined."
Two days earlier, speaking on CNBC on June 6, Gensler said that cryptocurrencies are essentially unnecessary. In his opinion, digital fiat currencies-the dollar, the euro and others-will suffice.
It's hard to disagree with Gensler. The cryptocurrency market is in fact full of scammers, swindlers and hustlers. But a hustler, that is, a trader in the crypto market is no longer a swear word, but quite a respected profession. And as for swindlers and scammers, they definitely need to be dealt with. And when the community has repeatedly appealed to the SEC about the ethics of FTX business and other major fraudulent projects, Gensler did not notice anything like that.
But now he has gone on the attack on major crypto exchanges for no reason. Neither Binance nor Coinbase, unlike FTX, robbed their customers or shut down withdrawals from their sites.
The idea "crypto is no longer needed" allegedly emerged in Gensler's head out of a sense of justice and exclusive concern for clients, a desire to prevent them from losing money. But what is the substitution of concepts here?
Indeed, the number of cryptocurrencies we have now is not justified. Yes, more than 99% of them are, if not securities, just outright fraud. However, bitcoin, even from Gensler's words, has no sign of a security. But all of the bans and restrictions stemming from the SEC's fight against securities are directed against bitcoin in the first place.
They are not afraid of cryptocurrencies, the absolute majority of which are more than meaningless, they are not satisfied with bitcoin. That is why regulators in recent years created all the conditions for the development of the crypto industry, did not notice the creation of tens and hundreds of thousands of fraudulent projects and their tokens, and when the time came to implement the CBDC digital collar and the critical mass of fraud in the cryptoworld exceeded reasonable limits, rightly began to fight them until their complete destruction. Along with bitcoin.
FedNow's pilot launch date has been pushed back to June. And bitcoin would be very much in the way of the implementation of the digital dollar. Therefore, a real war against cryptocurrencies has been declared.
By the way, judging by what Gary Gensler himself does in his spare time, he is that hustler, swindler, and con man.