In an interview with CNBC, chairman Gary Gensler didn’t mince any words about his take on the crypto market, saying, “we don’t need more digital currency.”
The SEC has filed lawsuits against two of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges in the last two days. It filed against Binance Monday and followed up with a suit against Coinbase Tuesday.
In an interview with CNBC, Gensler made it very clear what he and the SEC thinks of the crypto market.
“I think there’s been clarity for years,” Gensler said. “The investing public has the benefit of US securities laws. Crypto should be no different and these platforms, these intermediaries, need to come into compliance and protect the investing public.
“These trading platforms, they call themselves exchanges, are co-mingling a number of functions which in traditional finance, we don’t see the New York Stock Exchange also operating a hedge fund, making markets and, as we alleged in Binance, having a sister organization flooding the platform with transactions called ‘wash trading.’ And the lack of controls on the platforms is really a web of deception and conflicts.”
Jim Cramer pointed out that many of the measures the SEC is proposing in its Binance case, such as asset siezure, will essentially end the platform.
“We have concerns when a platform like this puts themselves out to the public, is consciously trying to avoid US law….It’s fundamentally a lack of controls, deception, conflicts,” Gensler replied.
‘We Don’t Need More Digital Currency’
Cramer then pointed out that he couldn’t understand, after reading the Binance complaint, how value was being assigned to the crypto assets.
“In the Coinbase complaint, we note that they have, through the Coinbase wallet, you can trade 16,000 different tokens,” Gensler replied. “And there’s a lot of debate as to the use cases and where’s there any there, there. Look, we don’t need more digital currency. We already have digital currency. It’s called the US dollar. It’s called the Euro. It’s called the Yen. They’re all digital right now.
“We already have digital investments. You have entrepreneurs representing digital investments on this program all day long. Whether it’s the big tech companies, the automobile companies, you name it, it’s all digit right now, the investing world.”
Watching the interview, the above exchange was one of the moments when Gensler seemed most passionate, lending considerable weight to accusations that he is on a crusade to kill crypto and protect traditional currencies.