The Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says that crypto exchanges are doing what the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) would never be allowed to do.
In a new interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, SEC Chair Gary Gensler says that crypto exchange platforms are not giving investors the proper disclosures required by the law and could be trading against consumers.
“Right now, without prejudging anyone, these tokens have not given you the disclosures that you not only need to make your investment decisions but also that are required by the law.
It’s a basic concept in our securities markets… and what President Roosevelt did is he created this commission to oversee that you, the investors, get disclosure, and in the crypto markets, they aren’t giving you that disclosure.
And secondly that exchanges, like the floor of the New York Stock Exchanges, get properly regulated to protect against fraud and manipulation, and they don’t trade against you. And these crypto exchanges are doing things we would never allow the New York Stock Exchange to do. Our laws don’t allow you to trade against your customers.”
Gensler also touched on the approval of spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), noting that deciding on launching the ETH ETFs could take some time, but didn’t give any specific dates.
“Ethereum has been traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for three+ years and the staff looked at that closely and that was approved. Now the underlying exchange-traded products still need to go through a process to have a disclosure about that and that will take some time and they’re working on that.”
The SEC approved Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs in January, paving the way for billions of dollars worth of inflows for the top crypto asset by market cap.
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