Former President Donald Trump stated that if elected, he will end the "war on crypto" and replace Gary Gensler with a new chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trump shared his statement during the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on July 27.
"For three and a half years, the current administration has waged a war on crypto and Bitcoin like nobody's ever seen before," said Trump. "For those who work in this industry, they target your banks, they choke off your financial services. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman."
The SEC has engaged in enforcement actions against numerous crypto companies, accusing them of offering "unregistered" sales of securities. According to the SEC's website, the agency has sued companies including Genesis, Gemini, Kraken, Beaxy, Bittrex, Binance, and Coinbase for this reason.
Coinbase said the SEC is putting digital asset firms in a "Catch-22" by demanding that the firms comply with "an untenably expansive view of its statutory authority," suing firms that are not in compliance, and refusing to go through the rulemaking process that would make it possible to comply. According to a legal brief from Coinbase, "This pattern of conduct is a purposeful effort to destroy an industry by demanding the impossible and prosecuting companies that fail to achieve it."
According to Roslyn Layton, a senior fellow at the National Security Institute, the SEC has engaged in a series of "non-fraud enforcement actions" against crypto companies but has failed to issue "a single regulatory guideline registering a digital asset or determining whether it will be a security." Layton said, "There are no forms, no instructions and no published rules for registration." She added that the SEC's lawsuits seek penalties so large that many companies are unable to fight them. However, those able to fight have exposed how truly bad the SEC’s faith has become. Layton cited Ripple as an example. The SEC sued Ripple for allegedly engaging in an unregistered securities offering through the sale of XRP tokens. However, U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres ruled that selling XRP to members of the general public did not constitute a securities offering.
Ledger Insights reported that the SEC issued an accounting rule mandating banks and other companies list digital assets on their balance sheets as both assets and liabilities. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said this rule should have been subjected to Congressional review. The House Financial Services Committee passed a resolution rejecting this rule. Congressman Mike Flood commented on this situation: "The end result is that banks must choose to either custody digital assets, thus inflating their balance sheet and severely affecting every other line of business or stay entirely out of the market," adding that "That’s not much of a choice at all. In effect, SAB 121 precludes banks from taking custody of digital assets altogether."
Trump previously served as president from 2016 to 2020 and is currently the Republican presidential nominee for the upcoming election.
