U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler used a speech on the "public good" of securities disclosures on Friday to point specifically at the crypto industry as a problem area.

Gensler, whose tenure atop the agency has been marked by a legal crusade against what he argues is a largely noncompliant industry, suggested that digital assets businesses are among those seeking to "whittle away at the SEC's disclosure regime," which requires companies to register securities and provide information to investors about them.

"There are participants in crypto securities markets that seek to avoid these registration requirements," he said in remarks prepared for an event at Columbia Law School. "No registration means no mandatory disclosure."

"Many would agree that the crypto markets could use a little disinfectant," Gensler added.

The regulator is pursuing several enforcement actions against companies it accuses of failing to register as exchanges and listing unregistered securities, such as Coinbase Inc. and Binance. It's also reportedly investigating Ethereum (ETH), potentially considering classifying that asset as a security – unlike bitcoin.

Gensler's rhetoric that crypto platforms need to get registered may be tested soon. The first firm to jump through the hoops as an approved special-purpose crypto broker-dealer, Prometheum, is getting ready to open the business to customers, executives there have said. Meanwhile, Coinbase has asked an appeals court to step in and force the SEC to engage in crypto-specific rulemaking.

Regulations Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler Disclosure Registration

Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.