The mission of the Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, but, in the case of crypto, the agency’s chairman has a funny way of going about that. This was on display again on Thursday when chairman Gary Gensler announced the Winklevoss twins’ firm Gemini had violated securities laws with their Earn product, which paid interest to customers who deposited currency like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The announcement was classic Gensler. It came in the form of a Twitter video that showed an animated mashup of cars and safety belts while a smirking Gensler boasted about his agency’s latest scalp in the crypto sector. The video felt less like a serious enforcement action than it did a cheap spectacle—the brand of performative politics popularized by hacks in Congress like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.
