The Hypocrisy of Gary Gensler
If you bought $100 of Algorand when Gary Gensler (SEC Chairman) was pitching you to build Uber on it, you would have exactly $5 today.
I should create a category for my content called “You really can’t make up this stuff!”.
Gary Gensler the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) openly ‘pitched’ a particular blockchain, despite claiming that today the US regulator sees ALGO, a native crypto-currency on Algorand blockchain, as a security.
The SEC has charged (link in comments) cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex with running an “unregistered national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency”. In a nutshell, the SEC claims that the non-US subsidiary Bittrex Global listed tokens that are in fact securities, hence the exchange has allegedly violated securities laws since it did not register with SEC. The irony is that one of the tokens mentioned in the complaint is ALGO, along with DASH, OMG, TKN, NGC, and IHT.
Crypto OGs and veterans will remember Bittrex as the world’s largest crypto exchange way back in 2014, after the infamous crypto exchange Mt. Gox bankrupted under dubious circumstances. The landscape has changed a lot since those days and today Bittrex, with its subsidiaries, captures a microscopic amount of the overall crypto trading volume.
My personal & professional experience with Bittrex Global (non-US entity) is absolutely phenomenal, and I always highly admired the leadership & team for running a smooth operation, with a niche of supporting many early-stage crypto projects by listing their token and providing them with a professional & secure environment to grow. While I am of opinion that we need to let the legal system do its work, I as well look forward to the crypto industry stating facts that reflect reality and continuing with the goal of building the decentralized infrastructure that will support the world’s growth in the decades to come.
Written by Anton Golub
Anton is a Strategic Advisor of Pazar, decentralized OTC marketplace. Anton founded & served as CEO of flovtec, Swiss market-maker providing liquidity solutions to digital asset exchanges, token issuers & protocols and offering investment products for professional & institutional investors. In addition, Anton is also a co-founder of Trust Square AG, a pre-eminent blockchain technology hub located in Zurich’s financial district. Furthermore, Anton co-founded Lykke Corp, a blockchain-powered exchange to trade all assets with zero fees, where he served as a Chief Science Officer. Prior to Lykke, he worked as a quantitative researcher at Olsen Ltd (successor to Olsen & Associates, founded in 1985), a boutique investment firm that pioneered the field of high-frequency trading.
As a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Alliance Manchester Business School, Anton worked on high-frequency trading, market microstructure and flash crashes. Additionally, in 2011, he was invited to participate in the Foresight Project – The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets, an international project on algorithmic trading funded by HM Treasury in the UK. Anton has also been involved in several research projects backed by the European Union (EU) and was on the Supervisory Board for the BigDataFinance project funded through Horizon 2020. Lastly, he has co-authored 13 academic papers and two books.
The Hypocrisy of Gary Gensler
