SEC's Gary Gensler likens stablecoins to poker chips at Wild West casinos: WSJ

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who previously taught a class on cryptocurrency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, doesn't see much long-term viability for "five or six thousand private forms of money," the Wall Street Journal reports, he said in a virtual event at the Washington Post. "In the meantime I think it's worthwhile to have an investor-protection regime placed around this," Gensler added. He relates the thousands of cryptos in existence with the wildcat banking era that took place in the U.S. from 1837 until 1863. Without federal bank regulations at the time, banks issued their own currencies. Speaking of crypto, Bitcoin ((BTC-USD -4.6%)) slides to $41.8K on Tuesday, marking an intraday low at $40K. He also takes aim at stablecoins like Tether (USDT-USD) and USD Coin (USDC-USD), which are pegged at a one-to-one ratio to the dollar and are claimed to be backed by high quality