Gary Gensler, the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, says greater investor protection is needed for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and he will be talking with Congress about creating federal oversight of this "highly speculative market."
"There is no federal authority to actually bring a regime to the crypto exchanges," said Gensler in a Friday interview on CNBC's Squawk Box. "There's a gap in our system right now."
Gensler recalled the regulatory regimes put in place in the 1930s after the stock market crash and during the Great Depression "to help protect against fraud and manipulation on the exchanges and to protect the integrity of the financial system… I think that that's really something we'll be working [on] with Congress and if they see fit to try to bring some protection for people that want to invest in this speculative asset class."
