Once more, the crypto market appears to be reaching new highs and the market crash that occurred back in February is all but forgotten. Last week, the market capitalization of the crypto space had hit a whopping $1.7 billion, primarily due to the rather bullish news of Gary Gensler’s getting the approval of the US Senate Banking Committee. They voted in favor of granting Gensler the position of the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the official announcement, the vote outcome had been 14-10 in favor of Gary Gensler.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden had nominated Gensler officially to become the chairman of the SEC back in January of this year. This news was quite well received by the crypto market, as the announcement alone gave a 3% boost to the entire market. It is important to note that Gensler had served as the former chief of the CFTC i.e. the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The reason Gensler has gained so much popularity and favor in the crypto space is because of the soft stance that he has taken towards cryptocurrencies as a whole. Earlier this month, he had gone on record to state that he would be focusing towards making innovation in the market overall.
It was noted by the former head of the CFTC that thanks to digital currencies like Bitcoin, new kinds of thinking have emerged in regard to payment solutions and financial inclusion. In general, last week had been a good one for the crypto space. Bitcoin had once more managed to move towards the $1 trillion market capitalization and had reached a value of $1.05 trillion, to be precise. Likewise, there had also been significant gains in Ethereum as well, as the second-largest cryptocurrency managed to reach a value of $1,800 per coin. This is the first time that it has managed to achieve this milestone in the last three weeks.
As of now, Bitcoin is moving past the $60,000 mark and there is a possibility that it could hit $65,000. It appears that everyone in the crypto market is quite pleased with the news of Gensler becoming the new chairman of the SEC. Jay Clayton, the man who had held the position previously, had not taken kindly to cryptocurrencies in the slightest. A $50 billion sell-off of cryptocurrencies had taken place on his last day in the office.
In general, the SEC has been involving itself steadily with cryptocurrencies on a whole. The most notable example being the lawsuit that the regulatory agency had brought against Ripple Labs for the sale of unlicensed securities. Now, the crypto market is hoping that Gary Gensler will prove to be a much more benevolent chairman of the agency than his predecessor had been. The regulatory agency has been known to put up stumbling blocks for putting a stop to crypto innovation and with the change in leadership, there is hope that a change in stance will also be seen.
