US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler spoke on Thursday with Bloomberg TV on its “Bloomberg Markets” show.
- crypto is highly speculative
- investors should not assume they’re getting the protections of the securities laws, even though the securities laws apply to many of the tokens
- investors are not getting full, fair and truthful disclosure
- the platforms, the intermediaries, are doing things we would never in a day allow or think the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ would do
- the platforms often are co-mingling and trading against you and have market makers that are on the other side of your trades
- and we don’t allow that in the rest of our securities markets
- this is a field rife with fraud, rife with hucksters,
- and there are good faith actors as well, but there are far too many that aren’t
This comes as the moves towards a BTC ETF proceed.
A lot is said about Gensler, much of it I see uncomplimentary. And much of it is motivated by the disreputable actors Gensler is referring to, those that make big $$$ out of manipulating hapless noobs trading crrypto. Many of the arguments made go that more traditional areas of finances also have bad actors doing bad things. But, as my mother says, two wrongs don’t make a right. Anyway, Gensler is right.