“U.S. Is Working On Crypto Regulations”- SEC Chief Gary Gensler

SEC Chief Gary Gensler today said that the securities regulator is working together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over crypto guidelines. What’s more, he also said that to ensure investor protection, the SEC is ‘trying to work with different crypto platforms, exchanges, lending platforms’.

In an interview with Bloomberg, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler mentioned cryptocurrency regulation and added that ‘SEC have a broad agenda and crypto is part of that agenda’.

SEC Chief’s take on Crypto regulation

Talking over crypto regulation, Mr. Gensler asserted that ‘the agency is essentially just looking out for investors,’ highlighting that “many of these tokens have the attributes of securities.”

“They are raising money from the public, and the public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others,” said SEC Chief.

“If you are a platform and you’ve got 75, or 100, or 5,000 tokens on the platform, the possibilities are that a number of them, and possibly a lot of them, are what’s referred to as a security,” added Mr. Gensler

Asserting that crypto is one of the top priorities at the SEC, Mr. Gensler explained that ‘the agency is going after investor protection and if that means bringing greater enforcement actions, then surely we’ll do that’.

‘It would be better to have these platforms come in, work with us, and come under the securities law,’ said SEC Cheif

CFTC Chief’s take on Crypto regulation

During a Senate Committee hearing, CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam has cleared that ‘there was no authority to effectively oversee crypto spot trading activity’.

Replying to the query ‘what he thinks over the single most effective action Congress could take to ensure customer protection’, CFTC Chief replied ‘Congress should bring regulatory structure to the crypto market’.

The CFTC is requesting more prominent administrative oversight, including pre and post-trade transparency, in addition to $100 million in funding, as a reference, to add to its current $304 million already put aside in the federal budget.

Behnam’s remarks echo the sentiment from October when he first called for a regulatory authority to look over crypto activity. However, Behnam also said that the CFTC stood ready to shield investors from “fraud and manipulation.”