Yaroslav Bogdanov: Gary Gensler has turned the SEC into a punitive body

The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler admitted that “he sleeps peacefully”. This was his answer to the journalists’ question about whether he feels anxious about the possible loss of his position on the eve of the presidential election.

In an interview with Axios, Gensler said that he is calm because he sees his job as “helping investors every day.” And he attributed the huge number of lawsuits against members of the crypto industry to the number of complaints the SEC receives. According to Gensler, it is about 40 thousand per year.

The question to Gary Gensler was not posed accidentally, as under his leadership the SEC is no longer perceived as a state regulator, but as a punitive body. This opinion was voiced by Yaroslav Bogdanov, President of GDA Group.

“The representatives of the cryptocurrency sphere have special expectations from the upcoming U.S. presidential election. For several years the SEC has been pressuring the industry, initiating investigations, and strangling the cryptocurrency market with incomprehensible rules and requirements. At the same time, the rules that the regulator applies in its activities appear literally out of nowhere, having been formalized for a specific situation.”

Yaroslav Bogdanov cited a recent case as an example. The SEC managed to win a case involving Consensys, which tried to prove that Ethereum tokens (ETH) are not securities. It was then quite rightly pointed out that the regulator’s key argument, “security of digital assets” was not in any U.S. regulations or legislation at all.

“Trying to regulate the cryptosphere in this way will not work. It will only lead to its complete destruction. Using the example of traffic – let’s imagine that there are vehicles, there are traffic police. But there are no rules, according to which the traffic should move. Then cars will move intuitively, according to their own rules, and the police, instead of setting up signs and introducing traffic rules, will simply stop every vehicle that attracts its attention, taking it out of the general flow of cars. The same thing is happening in the cryptosphere right now. The digital currency is there, the investors are there, the regulator is there. But none of it works together, which makes all parties suffer. Let me remind you that Gary Gensler in the same interview himself drew an analogy between the Commission he heads and the police. Whereas the SEC should simply move from the “battering ram” method to formulating rules of operation that are understandable to all. Then there will be no chaos and the cryptosphere will continue its development,” – explained Yaroslav Bogdanov.

The U.S. presidential election will be held on November 5. The presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to open the possibility of development for the crypto industry. His potential Vice President JD Vance is himself a crypto investor, which adds points to the Republican party. If the Republicans win, Gary Gensler will be fired from his position as chairman of the SEC. This was explicitly stated by Donald Trump himself.