BREAKDOWN: Gary Gensler, Bitcoin and the Bad-Faith SEC
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2023
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The SEC chairman, under increasing scrutiny for his dealings with FTX, claims all non-BTC tokens are securities.
Ah, the industry was once so hopeful about Gary Gensler’s appointment to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yet, as the years have progressed he has become the industry's most aggressive antagonist. In the wake of increasing congressional scrutiny of his dealings with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, Gensler is fighting back in media appearances. In today's episode, NLW discusses Gensler's argument that all crypto assets are securities, aside from bitcoin.
“The Breakdown” is written, produced and narrated by Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Michele Musso and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsor today is “Foothill Blvd” by Sam Barsh. Image credit: Alex Wong/ staff/ Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. |
| 0:09.2 | It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:15.3 | The breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDes. |
| 0:20.4 | What's going on, guys? It is Monday, February 27th, and today we are talking about the |
| 0:25.1 | regulatory main character, Gary Gensler. A quick note before we dive in. There are two ways |
| 0:31.5 | to listen to The Breakdown. You can hear us on the Coin Desk Podcast Network, which comes out every |
| 0:35.5 | afternoon and is featured alongside other great CoinDesk shows, or you can listen on the Breakdown-only feed, which comes out a few |
| 0:41.1 | hours later in the evening. Wherever you listen, if you're enjoying the show, I would so |
| 0:44.7 | appreciate it if you would take the time to leave a rating or review. All right, friends, |
| 0:49.4 | well, hope you had a great weekend. And to kick today off, I wanted to bring you back to a simpler time. |
| 0:56.8 | Remember when Gary Gensler was first coming into this SEC role, and so many folks, |
| 1:02.6 | myself included, thought, hey, maybe this will be good. I mean, this is a guy who has taught |
| 1:07.5 | about Bitcoin and crypto at MIT, right? The simple fact of that understanding |
| 1:11.8 | is almost certainly likely to make him better to work with than someone like Jay Clayton. |
| 1:16.2 | And then, remember how Gary decided to be avowedly against the industry, to perpetuate a |
| 1:22.2 | regulation by enforcement approach, and to take actions that are clearly less about the |
| 1:26.7 | investor protection he purports to care |
| 1:28.3 | so much about and so much more focused on advancing his own political career? Well, in all of that, |
| 1:34.7 | a road bump on Gary's preferred political path are the questions that swirl around his discussions |
| 1:40.1 | with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Gensler's opponents in Congress are getting louder about demanding answers, |
| 1:46.8 | about the SEC's discussions with FTX, as well as their investigations into FTX after the collapse. |
| 1:52.3 | The narrative those opponents are trying to make stick is a pretty simple one. |
... |
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