A private meeting between then-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton and a newly minted professor at the MIT business school named Gary Gensler appears to have set the stage for the misguided course of crypto-regulation we see today.
Gensler, of course, would go on to take Clayton’s job after Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. It’s unclear if the hyper-ambitious Gensler was actually prepping for that outcome by asking for the meeting. What is unmistakable: his intention to shape regulatory policy for crypto that has increasingly become a disaster.