From 2021 to early 2025, the US Securities and Exchange Commission under Chair Gary Gensler waged an unprecedented enforcement campaign against the cryptocurrency industry. Gensler — a former Goldman Sachs partner and MIT professor who had taught blockchain courses — arrived at the SEC with deep knowledge of crypto and a firm conviction: nearly every cryptocurrency (except Bitcoin) was an unregistered security, and nearly every crypto platform was operating illegally.
The enforcement actions were sweeping. The SEC sued Ripple (XRP) in December 2020 (a case that began before Gensler but continued under him), Coinbase in June 2023, Binance in June 2023, Kraken (twice), Uniswap (Wells Notice), OpenSea (Wells Notice), Consensys/MetaMask, and dozens of smaller projects. The SEC’s theory: tokens sold to investors with the expectation of profit from the efforts of others meet the Howey Test definition of securities, and platforms listing these tokens are unregistered exchanges.
The industry fought back in court. Ripple won a partial victory in July 2023 when Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP sold on exchanges to retail investors was not a security (though institutional sales were). Grayscale won its lawsuit forcing the SEC to reconsider Bitcoin ETF applications. These legal defeats cracked the SEC’s aggressive posture but didn’t stop the enforcement campaign.
The political tide turned in 2024. Pro-crypto candidates won Congressional seats. Both presidential candidates in 2024 made crypto-friendly campaign promises. When the new administration took office in January 2025, the SEC’s approach shifted dramatically — cases were dropped, enforcement paused, and the agency began working with the industry rather than against it. Gensler’s tenure became the defining regulatory chapter in US crypto history: a period that forced the industry to confront legal questions it had long avoided, but that also arguably drove innovation and capital overseas to more welcoming jurisdictions.
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