Gary Gensler is the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has popped up in many of my writings and continues to tell crypto investors they are not smart enough to be left alone. The following quote from an August 3 speech to the Aspen Security Forum is just another example of this:
"Investors really aren't getting the information to judge the risk, and understand the risk," Gensler said. "If we don't address the issues, I worry a lot of people will get hurt."
I have pointed out before that people that lose money in crypto have not been calling for the government to step in and help out, in fact that is the exact opposite of what they want and what crypto is all about.
I wanted to write a little about what else Gensler said in this speech, though. One of his statements against crypto went like this:
"Such public fiat monies fulfill the three functions of money: a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange. No single crypto asset, though, broadly fulfills all the functions of money. Primarily, crypto assets provide digital, scarce vehicles for speculative investment. Thus, in that sense, one can say they are highly speculative stores of value."
I don’t know how someone like Gensler gets to where he is if he can misunderstand crypto in such an extreme way. Hey, if you don’t believe in crypto or don’t “get it,” that is fine, but to say it doesn’t meet the standards of fiat is just sad. The only thing crypto doesn’t have that fiat has is the backing of a government and the ability to print it out on paper. Neither of which crypto wants or needs. The benefits of crypto against fiat (while they may not give it the gas to replace it any time soon) are very well spelled out, starting with a white paper form someone named Satoshi Nakamoto.
He ends his speech with this comment:
"At the heart of finance is trust. And at the heart of trust in markets is investor protection. If this field is going to continue, or reach any of its potential to be a catalyst for change, we better bring it into public policy frameworks."
WTF. When has trust ever been part of the finance world. I trust no one with my finances except myself. I use services and expect them to work properly and do my background research to make sure I do not get ripped off but that is not the same as trust. I think Gensler’s point, though, is we should trust him to keep us safe. We should trust the government to look out for us. Well, their track record has not been great recently in the area of “trust" and I doubt the SEC is going to win many people over with the "just trust us" argument.
Read the whole article if you want, I will leave the link below. I just pulled three points from it. If you do read it, realize he is talking to top level domestic and foreign government officials, business executives, leading academic minds, and noted print and broadcast journalists to discuss the most important issues of our time in the fields of foreign policy and national security. Not exactly the average crypt investor.
Resources
https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/gensler-aspen-security-forum-2021-08-03