In a recent interview with CNBC, speculation continues to surround the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the United States. In a recent interview with CNBC, Gary Gensler, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, described Bitcoin as a commodity. Gensler reacted to some developments in the cryptocurrency market and emphasized the need to get the space properly regulated to protect consumers. Despite his high reservations about the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem, Gensler seemed to be less critical of Bitcoin, which he affirmed to be a commodity. The SEC chair said some cryptocurrencies are commodities, but he was only willing to mention one crypto asset in that category, which is Bitcoin. Ganser also said the SEC, the commodity futures trading commission, or CFTC, and banking regulators will work together to oversee the cryptocurrency industry. We will now take you to Gary Gensler’s interview, where he discusses everything from crypto regulations to the state of stable coins like tether.
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What is the state of play in crypto right now? This is a highly speculative asset class. We’ve known this for a long time. The ups and downs of this speculative asset class affect Bitcoin and hundreds of other tokens. Many of these tokens are offered, or hope to be offered, to the investing public. I should say, hoping for a return just like when they invest in other financial assets. Many of these crypto-financial assets have the key attributes of a security, so some of them are under the Securities and Exchange Commission, some of them like Bitcoin, and that’s the only one. Jim, I’m going to say, because I’m not going to talk about any one of these tokens, but sure, my predecessors and others have said they’re a commodity working together. There are two great market regulators in this country. I had the honour of chairing the CFTC, a terrific agency. I now have the honour of chairing the Securities and Exchange Commission; a little different remit, a little different approach, but working together with the banking regulators as well. There’s work to be done there around what’s called stable coins. There’s a lot of work to be done to really protect the investing public and many of these tokens right now trying to operate are potentially non-compliant and I’ll leave it at that.
– Okay, well, one of the things that I love about what you’ve always believed in is transparency. You mentioned stable coin. I did not bring that up, but there is one that is regarded as being perhaps not as transparent as we’d like, which is called tether. It’s very big, about $60 billion. If they told us what they were really in, what they had their money for, wouldn’t that be better for everybody?
-Transparency is a key part of the investing formula. It’s kind of part of the basic bargain that you get to know something about the companies on a quarterly basis, and if material events happen, as they do all the time, then companies make additional filings called “8k filings” and the public gets to decide what risk they want to take. That’s the basic bargain, similar to stable coins. We have something called money market funds, and in money market funds you get to see what’s underneath the hood, what’s really below that one-to-one relationship, where in a money market fund the public has come to understand that, except for in very unusual times, they get a dollar for a dollar. Banks, as well as stable coins, have similarities to bank deposits, so you have something standing behind that relationship.
-Okay, so one of the things that happened and I sure hope that you that clarity and transparency occur, but what are things that happen at least in many of our lives? I’ve had my money with fidelity all my life and they came out and said, “You put your Bitcoin in your 401k.” It was a seminal moment because if 401k is made for Securities, you put Bitcoin in and suddenly that kind of endorsement makes us feel very comfortable, Mr. Chairman, with the asset that is Bitcoin, is we too comfortable?
–There’s a lot of risk in crypto. There’s also risk in the classic Security markets. What we have in the US is this concept that you have market regulators like the CFTC and SEC to help protect the public against fraud and manipulation in the markets. And when there’s a group of entrepreneurs that are selling something to the public and are saying to the public, “Come here, come hither.” We’ve got this great idea that when you do that, you’ve got to have basic disclosures, full and fair disclosures. That’s what the SEC does. That’s what we do really well. It’s less. So you know, in the oil markets or the wheat markets, the CFTC has and so that’s what we have and right now you have hundreds, if not thousands, of these crypto tokens that have the basic attributes of raising money from the public and having a group of entrepreneurs that you might have on your show saying “Come hither. We’ve got a good idea for you”, and that’s okay in America, if you comply with the laws, and we’ve got unfortunately a lot of projects that are non-compliant.
The SEC Chair is not the only high-ranking official of the U.S regulator who described the world’s largest cryptocurrency as a commodity. La0st month CFTC chairman Rossen Bain also described Bitcoin and Etherum as commodities and not Securities. Several leading Bitcoin proponents, including digital asset manager Eric Weiss and Microtrategy’s Michael Saylor, have applauded Gensler’s description of the crypto asset.
Here’s a tweet from Weiss:
Michael Saylor also tweeted about the SEC chair’s statement with a video of the CNBC interview.
Saylor also announced that his business intelligence and analytics company, Microtrategy, has bought an additional 480 Bitcoins for $10 million. The company’s bitcoin stash now stands at 129 bitcoins. Here’s Saylor’s tweet announcing the recent purchase.
This announcement will finally put to rest all the rumours about Microtrategy’s margin call and possible liquidation. Saylor has once again shown the extent of his devotion to the growth and development of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, even when he’s making a huge loss as a result of press time. Bitcoin is trading at $20,062 over 30% loss on each Bitcoin he has.
What do you think about Gary Gensler’s interview and Michael Saylor’s latest shopping spree despite the on-going cryptocurrency crash? Would you rather copy trade crypto?
[This article is a transcription of a video made by Savvy Finance]
[Original video: https://youtu.be/5WgYXoX3ZCI]
