Outgoing SEC Chair Gensler defends crypto stance less than two weeks before leaving agency

Departing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said he is proud of the work the agency has done and says there is still "work to be done" less than two weeks before he is set to leave the agency.

During a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday, Gensler repeated his assertion that crypto is "rife with bad actors," while also drawing comparisons to former president Donald Trump-appointed Chair Jay Clayton. Clayton was chair of the SEC from 2017 to 2020.  

When asked by Bloomberg about some of the SEC's high-profile cases brought against crypto during Gensler's tenure and whether that caused a change in behavior, Gensler said the agency built its work on top of what other previous chairs did. 

"It's a field that built up around noncompliance and I'm proud of what we've done, building on what Chair Clayton and others have done previously," Gensler said. "I think there's still work to be done."

Gensler announced in November that he would be stepping down on January 20, the day of President-elect Trump's inauguration.

The relationship between the crypto industry and Gensler was tense during his time leading the agency. Gensler maintained that most cryptocurrencies qualify as securities and urged crypto firms to register with the SEC. Some in the crypto industry have fought back, saying that it's impossible to register with the agency, partly because rules were made for more traditional entities that are different from the digital asset industry.

During Clayton's time as chair of the SEC, he led the agency through the initial coin offering boom of 2017 and 2018. During that time, his office filed a number of high-profile lawsuits, including against Kik and later Ripple. Trump picked Clayton late last year to serve as Attorney for the Southern District of New York. 

"He [Jay Clayton] brought 80 enforcement actions in this area," said Gensler. "We've brought in about 100 in our four years, which is consistent. It's maybe about 5% of what we do in our law enforcement."

Gensler told Bloomberg that he splits the industry into two, one being bitcoin and "everything else." 

"I've been around finance for over four decades, and everything in the markets trade on a mixture of fundamentals and sentiment at any given time," Gensler said. "But I've never seen a field that's so much wrapped up in sentiment and not so much about fundamentals." 

Trump tapped crypto-friendly former regulator Paul Atkins to lead the SEC, who would still need to be confirmed by the Senate.