Coinbase Global’s chief legal officer has called for Donald Trump to sack the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission as Republicans start drawing up a new policy agenda for cryptocurrencies.
Paul Grewal, the legal chief at Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, said: “The current chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, has led a regulation-by-enforcement campaign against the industry that has been destructive of investor protections and destructive of innovation in ways that we think need to be addressed immediately.”
His specific actions about crypto I’ve no beef with. But firing Gary Gensler is always a good idea. His basic worldview is simply wrong. It’s one where the bureaucratic state simply just must have ever more control. Always. Fire him for that – and never hire him, obviously.
Must admit I’ve never heard of Gary Gensler.
However I do love the fracking booster and climate sceptic Chris Wright who he’s made Energy Secretary. Maybe he’s actually going to go ahead with ‘Drill baby, drill!!’
Is “Gary” the US equivalent of our “Jeremy” i.e. the sign of a man not to be hired?
Ah, yes, the SEC, that agency famous for decades for protecting the public from financial misdeeds.
Not.
Recall that this is the same agency that was sent specific, detailed, evidence-based descriptions of the Madoff fraud, not once, but 5 times, starting in 2001, and that did – nothing. And that, in the aftermath of the Madoff fraud, ran crying to Congress insisting that if only they’d had more people, more funding, more resources, more Everything, they would surely have found him out!
And a dozen other frauds, maybe not as large but just as egregiously obvious, since then. Truly, this is the agency that can’t find its own ass with both hands and a flashlight, and this Gensler character is wholly a creature of the agency and the attitude it represents.
It’s not been mooted yet, but Pesident-elect Trump would do well to put the SEC (and associated, similarly-useless agencies) on the chopping block toot-sweet. They consume vast resources in not performing their fundamental remits. The idea that a huge and experienced financial industry actively searching for any and every way to get ahead can be effectively policed by a bunch of recent law school graduates with zero industry experience is just ludicrous – and yet here they come before the Congress, claiming that they can successfully regulate crypto if only they can get more people, more funding, more resources, more Everything!
If they really want to regulate crypto, they should hire Bankman-Fried and any of his associates they can lay hands on. Offer him one day off his sentence for every 8-hour day he works for the Feds. If you want to stop poaching, you hire a reformed poacher – not a professor of zoology.
llater,
llamas