
Gary Gensler has broken two months of public silence with a combustible appearance on CNBCâs Squawk Box, granting his first interview since stepping down as chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 20 January. In a 17âminute exchange with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the former regulator applauded Bitcoinâs staying power while likening most nonâBitcoin tokens to âsentimentâdriven memes.â
The remarks came as the SEC, under acting chair Mark T. Uyeda, is walking away from headline enforcement actions that defined the Gensler era. Gensler refrained from talking about individual cases, rather emphasizing that the crypto industry has no fundamentals.
Gensler Embraces Bitcoin Maximalism
âIâm going to step back a little bit from any individual cases and just say this again to your viewing public. This is a very small part of the financial markets. But if you were interested in this, think about every financial asset sort of trades on a bit of fundamentals and sentiment. But this field is almost *99 percent â or maybe one might say 100 percent â sentiment and very little on fundamentals,â Gensler said, gesturing toward the market outside Bitcoin.
âAnd while something like Bitcoin may persist for a long time because thereâs seven billion people around the globe, a real keen interest in it, thereâs tenâ or fifteenâthousand others of these tokens⌠and if this is just about sentiment, then generally those donât end up well and most then go down,â he added.
Pressed by coâhost Joe Kernen on whether Bitcoin should be treated differently, Gensler conceded a preciousâmetal analogy he had long resisted while in office: âI think the distinction is similar to in metals, thereâs only two or three precious metals. We humans have a certain fascination with two or three precious metals like gold. I donât think we humans will have a fascination with tenâ or fifteenâthousand meme or sentiment tokens trading over the years.â
The interview lands amid an unprecedented retreat by the Commission from litigation that Gensler himself had authorised. On 27 February the SEC filed a joint stipulation dismissing its civil action against Coinbase, permanently ending the 20âmonth fight over the exchangeâs alleged unregisteredâbroker activities. Just five weeks later, staff attorneys told Kraken that the agency would abandon its 2023 securitiesâexchange complaint âwith prejudice,â sparing the exchange both penalties and operational concessions.
The most consequential reversal involves Ripple Labs. On 19 March, CEO Brad Garlinghouse declared victory after learning that the SEC would withdraw its planned appeal of last yearâs mixed ruling on XRP sales. A joint motion filed on 11 April asks the Second Circuit to hold all appeals âin abeyance,â effectively closing a fourâyear battle that once threatened to define the security status of crypto assets in US law.
During his tenure, Genslerâs enforcement bureau opened or expanded more than 150 crypto cases, arguing that nearly every token except Bitcoin qualified as an unregistered security. His postâdeparture rhetoric sharpens that line rather than softening it. By praising Bitcoinâs resilience while dismissing other tokens as speculative âsentiment,â he echoed the Bitcoinâmaximalist thesis that only the original cryptocurrency can function as nonâsovereign money.
At press time, BTC traded at $84,178.

Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com

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