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- SEC Chairman Gary Gensler urged Congress to give the agency more authority to regulate the $1.6 trillion cryptocurrency market.
- "Frankly, at this time, it's more like the Wild West," said Gensler in a speech for the Aspen Security Forum.
- The market for digital currencies and related assets is "rife" with fraud and scams, Gensler said.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The $1.6 trillion cryptocurrency market doesn't have a robust amount of protection for investors and lawmakers should give the Securities and Exchange Commission more authority to regulate the industry, Gary Gensler, the agency's chairman, said in a speech Tuesday.
His call to Congress comes as the US has no single regulatory agency overseeing the market for digital currencies and related assets. He said the asset class is "rife" with fraud and scams and that large parts of the crypto market are not operating within frameworks that protect investors, consumers, national security and that ensure financial stability.
"Right now, we just don't have enough investor protection in crypto. Frankly, at this time, it's more like the Wild West," said Gensler in a speech for the Aspen Security Forum that's run under the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. Gensler has been serving as the SEC's chairman since April.
Gensler, who previously taught a cryptocurrency course at MIT, said he's looking to Congress for additional authorities and resources to prevent transactions, products, and platforms from falling between regulatory cracks and that the SEC has taken and will take its authorities as far as they go.
"In my view, the legislative priority should center on crypto trading, lending, and DeFi platforms. Regulators would benefit from additional plenary authority to write rules for and attach guardrails to crypto trading and lending," he said. DeFi refers to decentralized finance, or financial services and products largely run on the Ethereum blockchain.
Comments made by Gensler in June during congressional testimony suggested the SEC wants to have more regulatory oversight of cryptocurrencies before it approves bitcoin ETF applications.
In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg published Tuesday, Gensler said the SEC is looking at at least seven areas of the market, including decentralized finance and stablecoins.
Gensler's speech on Tuesday noted the cryptocurrency market features 77 tokens worth at least $1 billion each and 1,600 carrying at least a $1 million market cap, according to Coinmarketcap.com. The market's valuation marched past $2 trillion, but has decreased through a broad selloff in digital currencies led by bitcoin.