The End of the "Chaotic Decade" or the Foundation of a New Order?
In his final public speech before stepping down, Gary Gensler showed no signs of compromise. He defined his tough stance during his tenure as the end of a "chaotic decade," reiterating that, except for Bitcoin, the vast majority of crypto assets are "high-risk, highly speculative" securities. This farewell address precisely encapsulated his regulatory philosophy during his term: in the absence of clear legal updates, he imposed existing securities laws on the crypto market through maximum discretion, litigation, and deterrence.
The core conflict of the SEC during the Gensler era was not simply "regulation vs. innovation," but a struggle for discourse power between two completely different paradigms. One side is based on the century-old Securities Act and the Howey Test, emphasizing information disclosure, centralized issuers, and investor protection; the other is based on code, consensus, and the value generation and circulation of decentralized networks. Gensler refused to create new rules for the latter, opting instead to explore new territories with old maps, inevitably resulting in conflict and chaos.
The lawsuits he initiated against Coinbase, Binance, Ripple, and others were not intended to completely destroy these companies but were a high-cost "legislative" action. By dragging industry leaders into lengthy judicial processes, the SEC effectively delineated vague yet enforceable behavioral red lines, forcing the entire industry to self-censor amid significant uncertainty. This model of "enforcement defining regulation" successfully raised compliance costs to levels that smaller projects could not bear, laying the groundwork for subsequent industry restructuring.
The Game of Power: The Tripartite Struggle of Regulation, Wall Street, and the Crypto Native Community
Gensler's hardline stance has been almost entirely stigmatized within the crypto community, where he is seen as the "public enemy of crypto" stifling innovation. However, if we strip away the emotional labels, we find that the demands of all parties in this game are far more complex than they appear on the surface.
Regulators: Rebuilders of Order. The regulatory agency represented by Gensler has the primary task of maintaining financial stability and protecting investors, bringing uncontrolled capital flows under its jurisdiction. In the face of an emerging market that once had a market cap of trillions of dollars, inaction would be a dereliction of duty. Therefore, the severe measures taken are essentially a reactive response to a rapidly evolving new phenomenon within the existing legal toolbox. The goal is not to eliminate cryptocurrencies but to tame them, aligning them with established market operating logic.
Wall Street: Opportunistic Hunters. Ironically, Gensler's stringent regulations have objectively cleared the way for Wall Street's entry. When the SEC sued nearly all crypto projects for "potentially being securities," Bitcoin, which was explicitly exempted, received regulatory endorsement for its value consensus. This directly facilitated the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs, providing traditional capital with a flawless compliance pathway. Wall Street welcomes a "purified" market: by eliminating potential competitors and uncontrollable factors through regulation, only a few "too big to fail" compliant assets remain, making it easier for them to leverage their capital and channel advantages for profit. What they need is not a decentralized utopia but a predictable, investable asset class.
Crypto Native Community: The Tug of War Between Ideals and Reality. The community applauded Gensler's departure, hoping for a more "friendly" regulatory environment. Behind this expectation is a desire for capital inflow and a bull market. However, the "regulatory clarity" they seek may be a double-edged sword. Once clear rules are established, the previously unlicensed, freely innovative wild era will be gone forever. Project teams will face stricter disclosure requirements, token issuance restrictions, and potential tax burdens. The community's FOMO sentiment may lead them to overlook the impending compliance shackles.
From Enforcement Deterrence to Rule Access: A Fundamental Shift in Regulatory Logic
The core mechanism of the Gensler era was "uncertainty deterrence." Due to the unclear red lines that could trigger SEC lawsuits, all market participants had to invest massive legal and compliance resources, which in itself was a form of market filtering. Only well-funded and well-connected project teams could afford to engage with the SEC in court.
His departure, along with the mention of a "new token classification plan" in the briefing, signals a potential fundamental shift in regulatory mechanisms: from "enforcement definition" to "rule definition." This means that the focus of future regulation will no longer be on post-factum punishment but on pre-access criteria. It is foreseeable that the new regulatory framework will label different types of crypto assets clearly (such as commodities, securities, functional tokens) and come with a complete set of corresponding compliance requirements, such as:
* Capital Reserve Requirements: Stablecoin issuers or DeFi lending protocols may need to hold a certain percentage of qualified reserve assets.
* Information Disclosure Standards: Project teams will need to disclose financial status, team holdings, and significant risks regularly, similar to publicly listed companies.
* KYC/AML: Decentralized protocols may be required to integrate identity verification procedures at the front end, fundamentally altering their permissionless characteristics.
The chain reaction of this shift is profound. It will significantly reduce systemic risk and uncertainty in the market, which is a prerequisite for institutional investors to enter. However, it also establishes an access threshold centered around capital and legal resources. The era where a three-person team could launch a world-class DeFi protocol from a garage may come to an end. Future innovations may increasingly occur within "crypto financial companies" that can hire top law firms and obtain compliance licenses.
Essential Insight: Is Compliance the "Tombstone" of Decentralization?
The ultimate question in this regulatory game points directly to the core value of the crypto industry—decentralization. The existing financial regulatory system is fundamentally based on identifying and constraining centralized responsible entities. When regulators demand that a protocol be "accountable," they are essentially looking for an entity that can be sued, fined, or shut down.
Therefore, the pursuit of "regulatory clarity" is, to some extent, a process of "de-anonymization" and "re-centralization" for projects. To meet compliance requirements, project teams may need to establish foundations, set up boards, undergo audits, and ultimately become entities that can be legally recognized and governed. This directly conflicts with the ideal form of decentralized governance (DAO).
The crypto industry is being forced to face a difficult choice: to adhere to the fundamentalism of decentralization, remaining outside the mainstream financial system and becoming a niche, high-risk experimental ground? Or to embrace regulation, sacrificing some decentralization characteristics in exchange for legitimacy, liquidity, and acceptance by a large user base? Gensler's era has forcefully placed this question before all practitioners.
Industry Projection: A Layered Future and the "Compliance Bull"
Gensler's departure brings new variables to the crypto market in 2025 and beyond. The industry landscape is likely to evolve in a layered direction:
"Compliance Layer": Composed of a few blue-chip assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum that are "tolerated" or explicitly classified by regulators, as well as fully compliant stablecoins and security tokens. This layer will become the primary allocation area for institutional capital, and its price fluctuations may be more closely tied to macroeconomic cycles, forming what is known as the "institutional bull" or "compliance bull."
"Gray Innovation Layer": A large number of emerging DeFi, GameFi, and NFT projects will continue to explore in relatively ambiguous regulatory areas. They will face higher legal risks but may also contain higher returns and more disruptive innovations. Participants in this field will mainly be crypto-native funds and individual investors with a higher risk appetite.
For the industry, rather than celebrating the departure of a regulator, it is more rational to think about how to survive and develop under the new rules of the game. This means that successful projects in the future will need not only technological breakthroughs but also a high degree of maturity in governance structure, legal framework, and communication with regulators. The "coming of age" of the crypto industry may have just begun, and Gensler was merely the unsparing examiner.
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