Wall Street’s New Cop Signals More Scrutiny of Crypto, SPACs

  • SEC’s Gensler sees investor-protection ‘gaps’ in crypto
  • Gensler’s remarks were prepared for a House subcommittee
Gary GenslerPhotographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Wall Street’s main regulator is signaling that the Biden era will spell tougher oversight for cryptocurrencies and blank-check companies, two of the white-hot market’s most talked-about asset classes.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler on Wednesday told lawmakers that special purpose acquisition companies and digital coins posed significant policy and investor-protection questions. He referred to SPACs, shell companies that list on stock exchanges for the purpose of buying other firms and making them public, as “blank-check IPOs.”