Key takeaways
- Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler will leave office on January 20, the day Donald Trump is scheduled to take office as president.
- Gensler was appointed to a five-year term in 2021 and is resigning nearly a year before it ends.
- The SEC chairman had been criticized by the cryptocurrency industry for the SEC’s enforcement approach under his leadership.
- President-elect Trump, who had promised to replace Gensler, will now be able to nominate a candidate to lead the regulatory agency.
Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, will leave office on January 20, paving the way for President-elect Donald Trump to appoint a new chief financial markets regulator.
Gensler, who was nominated by President Joe Biden for a five-year term in 2021, has faced significant opposition from the cryptocurrency industry after several enforcement actions taken during his tenure. He was also criticized by Trump.
During his election campaign in July, at a cryptocurrency conference, Trump promised to fire Gensler on “day one” if elected. Instead, Gensler decided to leave the SEC on the same day as the president-elect’s inauguration.
Gensler faced criticism from the crypto industry
Gensler took office a few months after the GameStop frenzy in January 2021, but has recently been known for lawsuits filed against crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken for selling unregistered securities, among other accusations.
“During Chairman Gensler’s tenure, the agency brought actions against crypto intermediaries for fraud, fictitious transactions, registration violations, and other misconduct,” the SEC said in a press release on Thursday.
Despite Gensler’s crypto enforcement agenda, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which offer traditional investors a regulated way to indirectly invest in Bitcoin through their brokerage accounts, were approved earlier this year.
A crypto-friendly environment in Washington
In addition to Trump’s support for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the recent elections also brought more cryptocurrency-friendly lawmakers to Congress.
Since Trump’s decisive victory earlier this month, bitcoin prices have hit record highs amid growing optimism about the future of cryptocurrency regulation in the United States and speculation about Gensler’s replacement .
Prediction markets are betting on former acting U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks, former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, crypto lawyer Teresa Goody Guillén and former SEC Commissioner Dan Gallagher as favorites for to be the next president of the SEC.
