For weeks, SEC staff have had the option of going into the office, but Gensler is content to work remotely. Gensler, 63, was sitting at a computer in front of a paned glass door and, beyond it, a verdant, tree-lined yard. (“Some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong carped on Twitter last week after a dispute over regulating a new product.) Recently, when I pointed out this dissonance to Gensler - that he had gone from finding crypto fascinating in the lecture hall to scary in the real world - I accidentally doubled his cowboy cliché. “This asset class is rife with fraud, scams, and abuse,” he said in a scathing speech comparing the digital-coin realm to the “Wild West.” Five months into Gensler’s tenure, Wall Street veterans and bitcoin outsiders alike are still trying to figure out where he stands. Professor Crypto, perhaps?īefore long, though, Gensler shattered any illusions that the crypto industry had one of its own as the top cop on Wall Street. In January, upon the news that the Biden administration wanted the SEC to be chaired by Gary Gensler, a Goldman Sachs alum turned regulator who had taught blockchain and crypto courses at MIT for years, a similar term of endearment seemed imminent. At the Securities and Exchange Commission, the libertarian-leaning Hester Peirce got tagged Crypto Mom, and her colleague Valerie Szczepanik is the Crypto Czar. Christopher Giancarlo, who, as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, green-lit bitcoin derivatives, became Crypto Dad.
When financial regulators demonstrate that they hold generous views of bitcoin - that, contrary to the prevailing mood in Washington, they believe digital currencies could be more than a conduit for laundering money and buying fentanyl online - the crypto faithful honor them with affectionate nicknames. Photo: Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times/Redux
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