Gary Gensler links crypto with cash in viral 2018 video — Crypto Twitter reacts
The 2018 MIT professor Gary Gensler didn’t think most ICOs triggered U.S. securities laws. The crypto community is calling out the hypocrisy of Gary Gensler, the head of the United States securities regulator, after a 2018 video emerged of him stating that cryptocurrencies are on par with commodities or cash and are not securities. The video came from a “Blockchain and Money” class in the Fall Semester of 2018 taught by Gensler, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before he became chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On the topic of initial coin offerings (ICOs), Gensler said that "three-quarters of the market are not ICOs or not what would be called securities" and named the U.S., Canadian and Taiwanese markets as the "three jurisdictions that follow something similar to the Howey Test." "Three-quarters of the market is non-securities, it's just a commodity, cash,crypto,” Gensler then said. The below cli...