Gensler confirms departure as SEC chief next January
Regulator to step aside when Trump inaugurated
US financial regulator chief Gary Gensler on Friday said he would stand down when president-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated in January.
Gensler confirmed on social media he would resign from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 20. Trump said during the election campaign he would sack Gensler on “day one” of his presidency.
The SEC chief is unpopular with the incoming administration after taking legal action against cryptocurrency trading and platforms, saying the market was “rife with fraud and hucksters and grifters”.
“This is a field that has come along, and just because they're recording their crypto assets on a new accounting ledger, they [wrongly] say ‘we don't think we want to comply with the time-tested laws’,” Gensler told the BBC in September.
Cryptocurrency companies donated at least $119m to Congressional candidates they believed would pass legislation more favourable to the industry.
Under the administration led by President Joe Biden, the SEC launched a major enforcement effort on crypto, resulting in a record high 46 legal actions last year.
Two of the most high profile cases saw the conviction and jailing of FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao - founders of two of the biggest platforms.
Gensler was appointed SEC chair in 2021 and was technically supposed to stay in post until 2026. However it is normal for agency leaders to depart their positions when a new administration starts.
Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com