SEC Chair Gensler to Step Down

Before he led the SEC, "Gensler held himself out as an expert, teaching classes at MIT. After taking the reins, he quickly moved to regulate crypto offerings as securities under SEC purview," Malone explained.

Malone, though, doesn't expect Peirce to take the reins. "While the crypto industry is likely hopeful libertarian 'crypto mom' ... Peirce will take over as commissioner, she seems to be more interested in moving on after her term," he added.

During Gensler’s tenure, the SEC adopted rules pushed to boost disclosure around public company issuers’ cyber and climate risks, as well as for those companies seeking to go public via a special purpose acquisition company, the agency said in the statement.

It also moved to require certain broker-dealers and investment advisors to notify clients about data breaches that might put personal information at risk, and worked to expand transparency to the markets “by regularly publishing aggregate, anonymized data regarding registered investment funds, private funds and investment advisors,” the regulatory body said Thursday.

Previously, Gensler was chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (May 2009-January 2014), a senior advisor to Sen. Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance and assistant secretary of the Treasury from 1997-2001.

Earlier in his career, he worked at Goldman Sachs.