US President-Elect Joe Biden has announced the appointment of former CFTC chair Gary Gensler to his transition team, in a move that could benefit the role of cryptocurrency and blockchain sectors. The former CFTC chief will join Joe Biden’s transition team as a financial expert, overseeing transition with the Federal Reserve and several financial and banking regulators. He joins in the capacity of ‘Volunteer,’ which puts his involvement in a personal rather than professional capacity.
The former CFTC chairman has a positive outlook towards crypto.
Gary Gensler’s source of funding is listed as ‘Volunteer’ within the transition team lineup. The appointment of former CFTC chair comes amid a raft of hires for the transition team, as the President-Elect continues to piece together his staff for handling the transition of power. Gensler was appointed in the Obama administration to oversee the CFTC, serving from 2009 to 2014. Renowned as a stringent regulator at the CFTC, he was the driving force behind significant financial derivatives reforms, a $400 trillion market.
Gensler had previously said cryptocurrencies require a regulatory structure to reach their full potential, suggesting this would also benefit investors in the case of market manipulation and solving problems like the loss of private keys.
What would be crypto regulations like under Joe Biden’s presidency?
Democratic nominee and the former vice president Joe Biden defeated the first-term Republican President Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States in a historic election. While Joe Bide didn’t highlight crypto issues in his campaign, some of his supporters hope he will advocate for reform on tech policies. The Democratic President has been deemed as a “moderate” and “centrist” based on his policies, and it would be interesting to see how this new administration would approach crypto regulations.
