SEC Chair Gensler Asserts Bitcoin And Ether Are Not Securities — At A Bloomberg Conference In 2018

Gary Gensler may have refused to say if ether and other cryptocurrencies are securities in the recent past — but the now-chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) certainly appeared confident about their security status back in 2018.

A video is making rounds on Twitter showing Gensler speaking at a conference organized by Bloomberg for institutional investors. Gensler was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, with the 2018 event preceding his nomination as chairman of the SEC by roughly two years.

In the video, Gensler, a civilian at the time and speaking only in his capacity as a professor, says “Three-quarters of this [crypto] market is probably not securities.” He used Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash as specific examples, even stating, “Why did I name those four? They’re not securities.”

To catch you up, a security is a tradable financial asset with monetary value, such as stocks or bonds, that satisfies the infamous Howey Test. According to U.S. law, an asset meets the legal definition of a security if it is an investment of funds in a common enterprise from which there is an expectation of profit based on the efforts of others.

The clip of Gensler’s talk at the Bloomberg conference is one of many that have recently surfaced on Twitter. Still, in 2018, while giving a lecture at MIT, the now SEC boss affirmed that ether was not a security in the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

It’s a statement that totally contradicts most recent comments as chairman of the SEC in which he says besides bitcoin, which is a commodity, all other tokens in the crypto market are securities. Gensler has also launched a war against crypto exchanges — like Bittrex, Kraken, Binance, and Coinbase — claiming that they allow the trading of unregistered securities.

Some Republican lawmakers in the U.S. have criticized Gensler for his latest enforcement actions that are obviously stifling innovation in the world’s biggest economy and forcing a slew of tech companies to relocate overseas. Congressmen Rep. Davidson and Rep. Emmer have even introduced a new bill to remove Gensler from office.