Nikhilesh De, CoinDesk:
Thank you so much for joining me and agreeing to speak about all things crypto. I know it must be one of your favorite subjects. I wonder if we could get things started with previewing your speech to the SEC Speaks [program] tomorrow. You're talking about crypto, you're addressing a lot of I want to say frequently heard complaints from the crypto industry that the SEC is not doing enough to provide clarity. You do seem to address that head on. So I’m wondering if you could just speak to how you are looking at this issue. What are the top-of-mind issues for you when you're talking about crypto regulation?
SEC Chair Gensler:
So, Nik, good to be with you, good to be with an audience of CoinDesk subscribers or viewers. I think about investing in the context of markets. We had the Securities and Exchange Commission set up nearly 90 years ago, and it was to protect the investing public. And the speech that you reference, I start with those foundational things around President [Franklin] Roosevelt [and] Congress [and] what they tried to put together, and the first chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Joe Kennedy [father of later President John Kennedy and senators Robert and Ted Kennedy].
And so I think of it in that context. And 90 years later those basic bargains are really what it's about when somebody is raising money from the public – the public gets to decide which risks they take. We at the Securities and Exchange Commission are not a merit regulator. If you want to take a risk, take a risk. But we are, and what our regime is about, is about disclosure, making sure there's full and fair and truthful disclosure. Even President Roosevelt called it the “truth in securities act,” the first of our four key acts. And so I think of it all in that context.
Satoshi Nakamoto writes the white paper Halloween night in 2008 – a number of years later, people start to invest in it, they're buying and selling it. Some years later, we start to see other coins, other tokens. And, you know, if you just look at coinmarketcap.com, there's like 10,000 or so tokens listed there. Some have more liquidity than others, of course, and some have more value than others. But what is the investing public doing? They're investing for a better future, based upon the efforts of others. There [are] websites you go to, Medium posts that you read, there's Crypto Twitter, there's Reddit forums and places you can look for information. And it's about that common enterprise and that entrepreneurial effort which is the hallmark of investment contracts, which are securities. So I think that's where we are, that most of the tokens meet the traditional standards that our Supreme Court has laid out, and that we, the SEC, have a role to help protect investors and instill and enhance trust in these markets. But back to you, Nik.
Read the rest of the interview transcript here.
