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Thoughts on Gary Gensler?
917 sats \ 6 comments \ @SimpleStacker 9 Jun 2023 bitcoin
I remember having a decent amount of respect for him because he seemed to understand that Bitcoin should be treated as a commodity and of course he taught blockchain at MIT for a while.
But recent comments[1] by him were pretty questionable. Specifically, "We don't need more digital currency, we already have digital currency, it's called the US dollar."
Now, I can understand normies thinking that way. But there's no way Gensler doesn't understand that Bitcoin isn't just a "digital dollar". He surely understands that the utility lies in the fixed supply, decentralization, and uncensorability. So when he says the dollar is "already digital", he's definitely being disingenuous.
So what game is he playing? Setting himself up for Democratic politics, where a lot of the players hate crypto? I can't imagine him saying such a thing except to appease the fools who believe in it.
Either way, the fact that he said this just makes me think he's a stooge, and not an intellectually honest person.
[1] U.S. Doesn't 'Need More Digital Currency' Because It Has the Dollar, Says SEC's Gensler
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178 sats \ 1 reply \ @orthzar 9 Jun 2023
Gensler is not playing any games, and he's not a stooge. He is a proud US Federal employee. He genuinely believes that the best thing is for the US Federal government to be as successful/powerful as possible.
Gensler was not praising Bitcoin when he said that Bitcoin is a commodity while altcoins are unregistered commodities. He was simply doing what the US Federal government pays him to do: tell people what US laws say.
Gensler never was and never will be a Bitcoiner.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jk_14 9 Jun 2023
I know someone from MIT who knows him and the story was short then
  1. he always had a hop about Howey test
  2. he had accepted Bitcoin and hadn't accepted altcoins/shitcoins like most ppl in MIT
  3. now US Federal government pays him, so why do you expect that he will tell the truth that dollar simply guarantees the loss of its purchasing power
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110 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 9 Jun 2023
While I'm an anarchist who wishes the whole govt would just go away, the SEC is one of the, if not the most, ethical and useful 3-letter agencies of the many. It literally exists just to stop unscrupulous thieves from stealing from those who don't know any better.
Gary has been absolutely great at this job, all things considering. He sees through all the shitcoin-generated FUD and we all know that is a neverending battle. He's even smart enough to see that BTC is truly decentralized so it fails the Howey test while most everything else calling itself cRyPt0 would pass easily. Honestly, what more could we ask from someone in his position?
Some of you of course are thinking the letters E, T, and F, no doubt, but that's not his call at all. The SEC just doesn't have that job, but they could hold one up if they smelled foul play. There is no evidence they are doing that to bitcoin.
I think of GG as a bitcoin maximalist who is still at his govt, fiat-paid job for now. One day he'll leave that job and be free to stack all the sats he wants then.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 9 Jun 2023
Normally a bureaucrat at his level would jump at the chance to regulate something like Bitcoin. But he clearly has no interest in this presumably because, through his experience at MIT, he knows it's an impossible task.
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 9 Jun 2023
Change your starting assumptions. Start by assuming all gov actors are not acting in good faith. We have over 200 years of evidence. You don't get to his level of the empire by being a good honest person.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nicosey 9 Jun 2023
He is doing what is best for his career and regulators only want to regulate more.
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