The cryptocurrency industry is “rife with fraud and hucksters and grifters”, one of the United States’ top financial regulators has told the BBC.The chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, says the “investing public around the globe has lost too much money” because of crypto companies not following the laws his agency tries to enforce.It comes as the industry is spending millions of dollars on political donations, trying to influence the outcome of November’s US elections in the hope of more favourable future laws.In addition to the presidential battle between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, all 435 districts in the House of Representatives are up for re-election, as well as 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate.
This is a field that has come along, and just because they’re recording their crypto assets on a new accounting ledger, they [wrongly] say ‘we don’t think we want to comply with the time-tested laws’,” says Mr Gensler.He explains that rules that force companies that want to raise money from the public to “share certain information” with them have been in place to protect investors since the SEC was created.This was back in 1934, in the aftermath of the infamous Wall Street crash of 1929 that heralded the Great Depression.“Crypto is just a small piece of the US and worldwide capital markets, but it can undermine trust that everyday investors have in the capital markets,” says Mr Gensler.Whilst fans argue that crypto offers a fast, cheap and secure way to move funds, a survey by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, found that the number of Americans using it has dropped from 12% in 2021 to 7% last year.
