U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler thinks American crypto investors aren’t receiving enough information about most digital assets.
The SEC recently sent out a Wells Notice to Robinhood’s crypto arm, alerting the retail trading giant that it’s planning to pursue legal action against them.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Gensler says he can’t speak on specific companies but views a significant portion of the crypto sector as non-compliant with securities laws.
“The field of crypto assets, without prejudging any one of them, many of those tokens are securities under the law of the land as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. So we follow that law, and you, the investors, are not getting the required or needed disclosures about those assets.”
Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev took to X earlier this week to decry the SEC’s planned action against Robinhood Crypto.
“Over the last three years, we’ve reached a state of regulatory onslaught that is harmful to American companies and consumers.
The SEC’s continued attack on crypto, coupled with recent rule proposals like the one related to predictive data analytics, mark yet another improper attempt by the administrative state to stifle innovation.”
In his new interview, Gensler also avoided answering a question about whether Ethereum () is a commodity or a security and instead spoke about the sector in broad terms.
To me, the fundamental question is, ‘How do we ensure the American investor is protected?’ And right now, they’re not getting their required or needed disclosures, and the intermediaries in the center of this rather centralized market generally are conflicted in doing things we would never allow the New York Stock Exchange to do. The New York Stock Exchange is not allowed to trade against the investors.”
