Speculations have it that crypto-savvy Gary Gensler is the probable pick for incoming President Joe Biden to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission under his administration, Bloomberg quotes two familiar sources.
Sexagenarian Gary Gensler who is an erstwhile executive at Goldman Sach will likely take the place of acting SEC Chairman Elad Roisman as soon as Joe Biden assumes the presidential position.
Gensler previously served as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman during Obama’s administration and played a major role in the massive over-the-counter swaps market.
At present Gensler is also a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He takes courses on financial technology and cryptocurrencies.
While a formal declaration is yet to be made to the public, all signs prove Gensler is the leading option. However, a new approach would likely be introduced into the SEC.
As expected, Gensler, if nominated would have to battle a number of banks and financial organizations who will lobby controversial policy decisions.
Ripple continues to battle a lawsuit SEC filed against it under the leadership of acting SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. SEC, in the lawsuit, alleged Ripple of offering unregistered securities to the public. Nevertheless, it is expected that the assumption of Gensler would make the lawsuit take a new shape.
The Possible Two Sides for Ripple
Gary Gensler is a former executive and partner at Goldman Sachs, an American multinational investment bank and financial services company.
Although the investment bank in August 2020 sold about $6 million worth of its shares in MoneyGram, Goldman Sachs still has about 1.8 million units of MoneyGram’s common stock.
Remember that Ripple bought a 10% share of MoneyGram in a deal worth $50 million in 2020. The deal featured an agreement that the global remittance firm would use XRP in settling some of its transactions.
Via the deal, MoneyGram provided liquidity to Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) network that makes use of XRP in settlement of fund.
While MoneyGram seems like a bridge between Ripple and Goldman Sach, many are hoping that Gensler’s emergence will help lessen Ripple’s burden in the lawsuit.
On the other hand, Gensler, during a Business of Blockchain conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had made known that XRP and Ethereum fall under securities as described under the US law.
He said Ripple Labs and Ethereum Foundation appear like a common enterprise to him, adding that Ripple is doing a lot of things to increase XRP price in the market.
If Gensler were to act according to his statement at the 2014 conference, Ripple may find a tougher ground in the suit.