:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dlnews/PG7MZVQFEJBW3OZ64KINFSZBZA.jpg "Here’s the Real Reason Behind Gary Gensler’s ‘I Hate Crypto’ Attitude – DL News")
Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, says he has long suspected the real reason why Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is taking a hard line on crypto.
In a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos last month, Scaramucci said that despite Gensler’s public stance against cryptocurrency, he is a crypto-believer at heart.
Scaramucci said he believes the real reason for Gensler’s tough stance is due to his aspirations to become Treasury secretary under a possible second term in President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Go watch 24 hours of his lectures at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” where Gensler taught a course on blockchain, Scaramucci said. “He doesn’t hate crypto.”
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Gensler and Scaramucci did not immediately return a request for comment.
“He understands the technology,” Scaramucci said. “I teased him on Twitter – I used to work with him at Goldman – that he is a Bitcoin maximalist. If you really read what he says. But we now have politics interfering in the regulatory forces in the US. “
A Bitcoin maximalist is an individual who believes that Bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is superior to all other digital currencies and blockchain projects.
Prior to his appointment as chairman of the SEC, Gensler spent several decades at Goldman Sachs and worked at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
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He then became a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 2018 to 2020.
His courses on blockchain technology, digital currencies and financial technology have covered topics related to the implications of cryptocurrencies for the financial industry.
Some in the crypto industry were delighted when President Joe Biden nominated Gensler to the top job in 2021.
Someone who had studied crypto at a prestigious university would surely be in their camp, those optimists thought.
Gensler unceremoniously dispelled that impression by launching a barrage of 66 enforcement actions against the industry in the years since he was appointed.
This suggests to some that Gensler has adopted a common Wall Street stance where he supports blockchain as a technology rather than being pro-Bitcoin as an asset.
Political ambitions
Scaramucci’s comments echo Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, who also said in November that Gensler had political ambitions for the government’s top finance role.
It’s also why many in the industry have long suspected that Gensler repeatedly denied approval for mock Bitcoin exchange-traded funds until they were greenlit on January 10.
To be sure, Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary under Biden, has not announced plans to step down or step down from her position.
The SEC told Bloomberg in January that suggestions of Gensler’s supposed Treasury secretary ambitions were a tactic by opponents to discredit his policies.
“As Chairman Gensler has said several times, he could not be more honored to be the SEC Chairman,” the agency told Bloomberg at the time.
‘Technology-Neutral’
Gensler previously said most cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin should be classified as securities under existing laws and therefore subject to his agency’s oversight.
Cryptocurrency advocates, including Coinbase, have consistently pushed back, calling Gensler’s efforts to regulate through enforcement actions against industries and established players an abuse of power.
The US’s only publicly listed cryptocurrency exchange was sued by the SEC on June 6, alleging that Coinbase illegally listed 13 different digital assets without first registering them as securities.
Gensler indicated that platforms that facilitate specific crypto transactions have not complied with US regulations since at least as early as 2021.
“As a matter of policy, I am technology neutral,” Gensler said in his August 2021 remarks before the Aspen Security Forum. “As a personal matter, I wouldn’t have gone to MIT if I wasn’t interested in how technology can expand access to finance and contribute to economic growth.”
“But I am anything but public policy neutral. As new technologies emerge, we need to be sure that we are achieving our core public policy goals,” Gensler said at the time.
Sebastian Sinclair is a market correspondent for DL News. Do you have a tip? Contact Seb at [email protected].
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