Outgoing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler has insisted that the regulatory body never classified Bitcoin and Ethereum as securities.
Additionally, he separated the worlds largest cryptocurrency by market cap from other tokens, saying they still have to prove their actual value.
Gensler made the statements in exit interviews with Yahoo Finance and CNBCs Squawk Box, where he reflected on his tenure, which ends as the Trump administration prepares to take office.
Speaking with Yahoo Finances Jennifer Schonberger, the agency head made it clear that the SEC had never classified BTC and ETH as securities.
My predecessor and I, weve never said Bitcoin is a security. We havent said Ethereum is a security, Gensler declared.
Interestingly, his assertions appear contradictory, especially regarding Ethereum. A filing from April 2024 revealed that the agency had believed for at least a year that ETH was an unregistered security that had been trading in violation of pertinent laws.
However, there seems to be no ambiguity regarding Bitcoin, with Gensler reiterating its status on his CNBC appearance, stating that BTC did not fall under securities laws, unlike tens of thousands of other tokens in the market.
Asked why he had not clarified the status of ETH and BTC outright, Gensler claimed that his job required him to be extremely careful with his language.
While the Biden appointee described Bitcoin as highly speculative, he still acknowledged that, given its growing popularity worldwide, it could become an asset similar to gold in the future.
However, he had no kind words for other cryptocurrencies, claiming they first had to show their true use case and value proposition:
These other thousands of projects need to show their use case and show that they actually have fundamentals underlying them, or they wont persist.
One of the most contentious aspects of Genslers term was the SECs enforcement-heavy approach to crypto regulation. Critics have argued that the agency has focused more on penalizing non-compliance than providing clear rules for the industry.
Asked about this by CNBCs Andrew Sorkin, the Commissions leader shifted the onus for crafting new regulatory frameworks to Congress. Additionally, he decried the high levels of noncompliance by crypto projects, many of which he claimed fell under the securities laws.
On the recent appellate courts demand that the SEC better explain why it turned down Coinbases request for the agency to develop crypto-specific rules, the former MIT professor stated, Not liking the law and not liking rules doesnt mean there arent laws and rules.