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Gary Gensler, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said he would resign once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, ahead of what are expected to be major changes at top oversight agencies.
The cryptocurrency industry cheered the coming resignation of the SEC chair, who took a particularly aggressive approach to regulating crypto during his term, including bringing high-profile lawsuits against two of the world’s largest exchanges.
Trump has not yet indicated his choice for Gensler’s replacement, but Reuters reported that he is expected to appoint one of the current Republican SEC commissioners, Hester Peirce or Mark Uyeda, as acting head.
SIGNALS
Crypto industry’s ‘perfect villain’ removed — but Trump may not be a savior
The departure of Gensler will “rid the industry of the perfect villain,” The Economist noted, but whether the second Trump administration will be a boon for crypto remains to be seen. Bitcoin, the most widely traded cryptocurrency, has rocketed since the former president’s victory, and made further gains after Gensler announced his plans to step down. The sector complained that Gensler constantly changed the SEC rules that apply to digital assets, but a new Trump appointee may not provide much more clarity. Trump’s pledge to deregulate crypto could ultimately also amplify its inherent volatility, making it “more susceptible to bubbles and crashes,” a business expert argued in The Conversation.
Silicon Valley eyes sweeping deregulation but fears of chaos linger
Trump will probably expand his “one in, two out” approach to deregulation — only permitting new regulation once two existing rules have been eliminated — which “could create great opportunities for innovation and new business,” Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, argued in the Financial Times. Many in Silicon Valley supported Trump because they believed he would sweep away the Biden administration’s “unclear rules” in fields such as crypto, he wrote. However, questions remain as to whether Trump will ensure the rule of law for companies or unleash chaos by targeting certain firms for personal reasons, and his “unilateral and insular” policies are at odds with the pluralistic approach needed in an ever-more networked world, including in artificial intelligence, Hoffman wrote.
States may prove a bulwark against rollback of environmentalist policies
Trump’s promise to repeal the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in climate and energy in US history, will “quickly face a political test,” The New York Times noted: roughly 80% of the money spent so far has gone to Republican congressional districts, creating new jobs and investment, which lawmakers and business leaders will likely want to protect. The locus of climate action will shift from the federal government to individual states, which, however Republican voting, won’t be able to deny the impact on the ground, a climate change expert told the outlet. Climate-positive ballot initiatives were passed in more than two dozen states, a scientist noted in Carbon Brief, so individual states already seem to be carrying some of this momentum.