Newly elected US President Joe Biden has picked Gary Gensler to serve as the Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to reports published on Jan 21. With rumours of Gensler’s nomination first appearing in Nov. 2020, Gensler will still have to be confirmed by the senate.

• Gensler is highly supportive of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), having made several detailed lectures on assets, the technology itself and the economic impact of crypto in a course at MIT
• He displays deep knowledge on the mechanics of DLTs, cryptography, transaction processing and applications in central banking
• In one such lecture, Gensler praises Ethereum and compares it to competitors NEO and EOS; he does not explicitly say that Ethereum better or worse than the latter two
• He has also said that cryptocurrencies are both investments and commodities, and expects banking in the 2020s to be radically different
• As a potential SEC head, Gensler’s role will be to bring some order and accountability to the market -- a move that could have a positive effect if his largely pro-friendly stance results in encouraging regulation
• His suggestions include, among other things, labelling XRP and Libra as securities
• Gensler was previously the head of the United States Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under the Obama administration