Breaking: SEC Chair Gary Gensler to step down from position early next year

• SEC Chair to step down the same day Trump takes office
• Under Gensler, “18 percent of the SEC’s tips, complaints, and referrals were crypto-related”

The infamous Chairman of US Securities and Exchanges Commission – Gary Gensler – has announced he will bid goodbye to the commission this coming new year. Taking to X, Gensler announced that he would be stepping down as the chairman on January 20th, 2025. This has resulted in several crypto-netizens taking to X to celebrate the news.

Source: X

The announcement comes weeks after Donald Trump won the Presidential election. And, he is poised to take office on the Inauguration Day, which is the same day as Gensler resignation.

Gary Gensler’s over-regulation of crypto-markets

Notably, throughout his tenure, Gensler has been marked as the arch enemy of the crypto-market. This was mainly due to the non-stop enforcement actions taken against some of the most notable crypto-firms.

Many have repeatedly claimed that the market’s overregulation is stifling innovation. This includes Daniel Gallagher, the Chief Legal Officer of Robinhood. Moreover, the American-based crypto exchange Coinbase sued the commission for its lack of specific rules related to crypto markets.

A press release posted by the SEC said,

“Office of the Inspector General, 18 percent of the SEC’s tips, complaints, and referrals were crypto-related, despite the crypto markets comprising less than 1 percent of the U.S. capital markets (…) court agreed with the Commission’s actions to protect investors and rejected all arguments (…) when securities are being offered—whatever their form.”

Notably, the most famous crypto versus SEC battle during Gensler’s tenure was that against Ripple – a software company that drives the innovation of XRP. The commission had claimed that XRP was a security and held the firm accountable for the illegal sale of the said security.

Read Ripple’s [XRP] Price Prediction 2024-25

However, the commission could not win the argument in court as the verdict declared that XRP as a crypto was not a security. Nonetheless, SEC did take a partial win as the court deemed that the institutional sale of the crypto did fall under securities rule. While this ruling was appealed, the XRP community continues to be bullish about the coin’s future.

The coin recently broke the $1 threshold and is currently trading at $1.20, according to CoinMarketCap. The latest announcement seems to have added more fuel as the coin has gained over 6% in the past hour. The 24-hour chart showed an uptrend of 9.63%, while the 7-day chart showed a massive gain of 56.19%.