James David Vance, the new running mate of Donald Trump, once called SEC Chair Gary Gensler the “worst person” to be regulating the crypto industry in a recently resurfaced video.
The clip, which has been circulating on social media, shows Vance speaking at Remedy Fest, a private conference hosted by Y Combinator and Bloomberg on Feb. 28.
“If there’s a candidate for the worst person in my view, at least in terms of my substantive disagreement [...] it's Gary Gensler,” Vance said.
NEW VIDEO
— Bill Hughes : wchughes.eth (@BillHughesDC) February 27, 2024
Ohio Senator JD Vance on Gensler:
He is way way way too political in his regulation of securities.
He has it backwards when wanting to ban useful tokens and seemingly not caring about those without specific utility.
Sen. Vance sees blockchain as key to… pic.twitter.com/yKoNmk4Bm4
“He wants to inject politics way too much into the actual business of securities in the US,” said Vance.
“The approach that Gary has taken to regulating blockchain and crypto is the exact opposite of what it should be.”
JD Vance has spoken out against the SEC before
Vance has stood in solidarity with the crypto industry several times throughout his political career.
On May 16, Vance was among 60 senators who voted to reverse the SEC’s controversial SAB 121 accounting guidelines—a set of policy suggestions that prevent US banks from custody of crypto assets.
Earlier this year, on Feb. 7, Vance led a handful of other Republican senators in penning a letter to Gensler, raising concerns over an enforcement action against crypto mining firm Debt Box, where a judge found that SEC lawyers used false statements to justify freezing assets linked to the company.
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“It is unconscionable that any federal agency [...] [which] has often pursued its regulatory mission through enforcement actions rather than rulemakings [...] could operate in such an unethical and unprofessional manner,” wrote Vance in the letter.
In February 2022 Vance lauded crypto as a solution to government overreach when Canada’s finance minister froze the bank accounts of a convoy of truckers protesting COVID-19 lockdowns.
“This is why crypto is taking off, the regime will cut off your access to banking if you have the wrong politics,” he wrote in a Feb. 16 X post.
Before serving as a Republican Senator in the state of Ohio, 39-year-old Vance served in the US Marines, studied law at Yale, and later went on to work as a venture capitalist under PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
In a 2022 financial disclosure report for the US Senate, Vance reported holding between $100,001 and $250,000 in Bitcoin.
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