Can SEC’s Gary Gensler Offer More Than Tough Talk?
The new chairman has taken a not-so-gentle stance on Bitcoin and U.S.-listed Chinese companies like Alibaba. But does his agency have any real bite?
Gary Gensler, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chair since April, has been making hawkish sounds about risky assets lately. In August alone, he slammed the crypto world as “the Wild West,” one that’s “rife with fraud, scams and abuse.” He labeled the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and other New York-listed, Cayman Islands-incorporated Chinese tech companies as mere “shell companies.”
Keen to rein in his bêtes noires, Gensler is engaged in a turf fight with the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, over the nature of crypto tokens. On Aug. 3, he staked out his territory by saying many of them may be “unregistered securities.” That claim was rebuffed a day later by the outgoing CFTC chairman Brian Quintenz, who is seen as an ally by crypto traders. Gensler is now seeking Senator Elizabeth Warren’s help for authority to regulate such exchanges.