U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler could be facing unemployment after Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) introduced a bill to remove the SEC boss from power.
“Tyrannical Chairman”
In a June 12 tweet, crypto-friendly congressman Warren Davidson announced that he had filed the “SEC Stabilization Act” in the House of Representatives.
“U.S. capital markets must be protected from a tyrannical Chairman, including the current one. That’s why I’m introducing legislation to fix the ongoing abuse of power and ensure protection that is in the best interest of the market for years to come,” Davidson said in the Twitter statement. “It’s time for real reform and to fire Gary Gensler as Chair of the SEC,” he concluded.
Rep. Davidson, the vice chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion, initially announced his intention to have Gensler fired from his role in April. At the time, he said he would be introducing legislation to “correct a long series of abuses” by firing the Chairman of the SEC and replacing the role with “an Executive Director that reports to the Board (where authority resides)”.
House Majority Whip and Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer, who co-authored the bill, posited that “the SEC Stabilization Act will make common-sense changes to ensure that the SEC’s priorities are with the investors they are charged to protect and not the whims of its reckless Chair.”
While they will need bi-partisan support to pass the Senate, if the bill were to succeed, Gensler would no longer be able to serve in a leadership capacity at the top American financial watchdog. It would also overhaul the agency to redeploy power from the chairman to other commissioners and a single political party would not be able to hold more than three commissioner seats at a given time. According to Fox News, the bill would also add a sixth commissioner to the agency and create an executive director position. The SEC’s board of commissioners currently has five members.
SEC, Gensler Under Fire
The SEC and its chair Gary Gensler have drawn criticism from the cryptosphere — recently and in years prior — for not having clear-cut nor innovative regulations and for insinuating in different interviews that they truly want to destroy the crypto industry. Gensler has made it clear that he believes all crypto assets — apart from bitcoin — should be classified as securities, and therefore, most cryptocurrency-focused companies and trading should fall under the SEC’s purview and comply with regulatory frameworks that are already being used for other securities.
Back in February, Rep.Davidson slammed the SEC’s regulation-by-enforcement technique when it fined Kraken $30 million and forced the exchange to close its staking program in the U.S permanently.
The SEC said last week it was suing Binance, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and the operating company for Binance.US on allegations of breaking federal securities laws. A day later, it levied similar charges against rival exchange Coinbase (COIN).
While the SEC hits the crypto industry with a wave of enforcement actions, the European Union has been working hard to usher in a new set of rules for the nascent sector.
