Gary Scott Gensler[1] (born October 18, 1957) is a former American government official and former investment banker who served as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 2021 to 2025.

[2] Gensler previously worked for Goldman Sachs and led the Biden–Harris transition's Federal Reserve, Banking, and Securities Regulators agency review team.

[16] In 1999 and 2000, under then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Gensler fought for passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted over-the-counter derivatives from regulation.

[22] As Undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, Gensler advised and assisted Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers on aspects of domestic finance, including formulating policy and legislation in the areas of financial institutions, public debt management, capital markets, government financial management services, federal lending, fiscal affairs, government sponsored enterprises, and community development.

[26] Upon becoming chairman, Gensler began leading the Obama Administration's effort "to start policing the Wild West of finance: the murky market for over-the-counter derivatives".

[15] When the Treasury Department released draft legislation to bring regulatory oversight to the swaps market, Gensler sent a letter to Congress arguing that the proposal did not go far enough.

[31] Early in his tenure, Gensler listened to tape recordings of two Barclays employees as they discussed plans to report false interest rates in an effort to manipulate Libor.

[51][52] On September 21, Gensler remarked to The Washington Post that most cryptocurrency projects dealing with securities should fall under the regulatory purview of the SEC, though the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), of which he was a former chair, was better suited for some others.

[54][55] On October 15, the SEC approved the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States after Gensler announced support for doing so the previous August.

The Economist identified the risks presented by decentralized finance and crypto-assets valued at $2.5 trillion as a challenge for Gensler in 2022, and noted his experience in teaching blockchain technology.

[60] On April 4, 2022, Gensler announced that the SEC would begin to register and regulate cryptocurrency exchanges at a University of Pennsylvania Law School students association conference.

[66] At a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal on June 14, Gensler expressed concern that the Lummis-Gillibrand bill could inadvertently undermine stock market and mutual fund protections, noted that cryptocurrency companies were already engaging in behaviors overseen by the SEC, and argued that some digital assets are securities necessitating oversight from the SEC rather than commodities (even if the overwhelming majority of tokens offered by cryptocurrency exchanges are commodities).

[67] On January 12, 2023, the SEC filed a complaint in Southern New York U.S. District Court that both Genesis and Gemini of offering and selling unregistered securities.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) and Bernie Sanders (I–VT) sent a letter to Gensler urging the SEC to remove and replace the sitting members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), arguing that Trump Administration appointees had politicized the agency and compromised its independence.

[79] Speaking at The Wall Street Journal CFO Network event on June 7, Gensler emphasized the need for new restrictions and rules to reduce the risk of improper insider trading.

[80] On June 30, Robinhood Markets agreed to pay $70 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) that alleged that the company had misled its customers, approved ineligible and inexperienced traders for options strategies, and did not supervise its technology properly to prevent outages.

[84] On August 27, the SEC launched a review of strategies and practices used by online brokers and investment advisors that promote user engagement with trading gamification.

[88] On January 27, 2022, Southern Florida U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia Altonaga dismissed a lawsuit filed by investors against Robinhood Markets for acting negligently during the GameStop short squeeze.

[list 2] On July 20, the Social Science Research Network released a preprint written by economists Maureen O'Hara, Robert P. Bartlett, and Justin McCrary that suggested that Robinhood Markets traders caused a surge in trading volume of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares in February and March 2021.

[107][108][109] In 2021 and 2022, an index constructed by researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that bitcoin mining consumed more electricity during the course of the year than the entire nations of Argentina (a G20 country) and the Netherlands.

[125] On March 21, the SEC approved rules requiring the disclosure of stock corporation climate risks and net contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in 10-K forms.

[126][127] On the same day, The Wall Street Journal criticized Gensler for proposing legislation requiring public companies to disclose climate risks.

[128] On March 26, CNBC reported that ExxonMobil started a pilot program in January 2021 with Crusoe Energy Systems to also divert its flare gas into generators producing electricity to power shipping containers full of bitcoin miners in the North Dakota Bakken region (which it expanded the following July) as part of the same industry initiative with ConocoPhillips, and that Crusoe has stated reduces carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 63 percent as compared with continued flaring.

[135] After noting that his company had launched a division to commercialize carbon capture in testimony before the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee on October 28, 2021,[136][137] ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods discussed in an interview with CNBC journalist David Faber on June 24 that part of ExxonMobil's long-term strategy to remain a profitable company while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and plastic pollution was to invest in carbon capture and storage technology with a network hub in Houston and to remain a plastics producer while making improvements to waste management.

[146][147] On September 14, Gensler announced the imminent release of an agency report on the short squeeze in testimony before the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

[153][154][155] After publicly revealing her identity on 60 Minutes,[156][157] Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security about the content of the leaked documents and the complaints.

[166] On February 18, 2022, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media.

[176][177] On December 6, the SEC opened an investigation of Tesla in response to a whistleblower complaint alleging the company did not properly disclose to its shareholders fire risks associated with its solar panels.

[208][209][210] On April 13, a group of Twitter shareholders filed a lawsuit against Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stake to the SEC within the agency's prescribed deadline.

[254][255] In a complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid with the SEC, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Federal Trade Commission on July 6, former Twitter security officer Peiter Zatko alleged that specific Twitter executives—including Parag Agrawal and certain board members—have repeatedly made false and misleading statements to its board, shareholders, users, regulators, and the public about privacy, security, and content moderation on the platform since 2011 in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 and SEC disclosure rules including misrepresentations to Musk during the course of the acquisition bid (citing Agrawal's May 16 tweet detailing company policies for addressing fake and spam accounts).