U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler today wished Bitcoin a happy birthday by using Halloween to mock the cryptocurrency’s creator.
In a post on Twitter on Tuesday, the top regulator also asked crypto companies to comply with securities laws.
Fifteen years ago, the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper, Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic payment system. The newspaper, published online October 31, 2008, drafted a plan allowing anyone to make payments “without going through a financial institution.”
Gensler wrote: “If Satoshi Nakamoto became Satoshi Nakamoto for Halloween, would we be able to tell?
He added: “Happy 15th anniversary to the famous Satoshi white paper that started crypto. All crypto companies that are misleading investors should start forcing them to comply with securities laws.”
Under Gensler’s leadership, the SEC has cracked down on the digital assets industry like never before, suing major crypto companies like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken.
The main regulator’s main criticism of the sector is that many companies are selling coins and tokens that are believed to be unregistered securities.
But crypto bigwigs and lawmakers have criticized Gensler for not being clear enough with the rules. They argue that it regulated through law enforcement and spurred innovation abroad.
Gensler responded by saying the rules are already clear enough.
“It’s called securities regulation, and so there are disclosure rules when someone is trying to raise money from the public,” the SEC chairman said. said lawmakers in March.
He also has argued that in the United States, “we don’t need more digital currency” and that the industry is “built on non-compliance.”