President-elect of the United States Joe Biden has appointed crypto-friendly former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Gary Gensler to lead the administration’s financial policy transition, according to a report from American Banker published on Nov. 9.

• A Wall Street veteran, Gensler has spoken in favor of cryptocurrencies on multiple occasions, including in front of the US congress
• In July 2018, Gensler responded to a congressman’s statement on Bitcoin being a Ponzi scheme by saying that “there’s really nothing behind gold either … what’s behind it is a cultural norm...so bitcoin is a modern form of digital gold”
• He has also asked for Libra to be regulated, saying that its role as security was “unambiguous” and also suggested that the same for XRP
• Gensler has also deemed the potential of blockchain as real, calling it a “change catalyst”
• The incoming Biden administration has not given much indication of where it stands with respect to cryptocurrency; outgoing President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has said that “he is not a fan of Bitcoin”
• Gensler has decades of experience, working with the Clinton and Obama administrations; he has also taught a course on the applications of Bitcoin and blockchain in Finance at MIT