Richard Hart's outer space diamond is part of the SEC'a charge against him| Credit: Shutterstock
Key takeaways
- U.S. SEC refutes reports that chairman Gary Gensler has resigned.
- Gensler’s alleged resignation trended on Twitter.
- Original news report could have been generated by AI.
United States Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler has not vacated his post, despite news reports claiming the agency’s head had resigned over the weekend.
An initial report from recently registered news website thecryptoalert.com claimed that Gensler had tendered his resignation from the SEC, citing anonymous sources.
Efforts made by Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett to independently verify the information resulted in a short response from the SEC.
According to Terrett’s email correspondence with the SEC, the agency had simply replied ‘nope’ in the subject line of its return email to the Fox journalist.
AI Fake News?
It appears that the Gensler resignation article could well have been produced using AI tools. The website has not been live for longer than three months and has previously published articles that have been debunked as fake news.
The news quickly trended on social media, with prominent cryptocurrency community members casting doubt over the veracity of the initial report.
Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino later corroborated the SEC’s response that Gensler had not resigned as chair of the agency.
CCN has ascertained that the website that ran the initial story has only published 17 news articles since June 2023. It has also been reported that the article itself scored 96% on ZeroGPT, a service that detects whether the text has been generated by AI tools.
Gensler’s Crusade Against Crypto
Gensler has copped widespread criticism from the cryptocurrency community for his attitude and enforcement actions against the space in recent months.
Under Gensler’s tenure as chair of the SEC, the agency has instituted separate legal proceedings against Binance.US and Coinbase for alleged unregistered securities offerings and other securities laws violations.
Coinbase has petitioned the SEC to issue clear regulatory guidelines for the cryptocurrency ecosystem in an effort to create an environment that fosters the sector in the U.S.
Gensler has also faced political pressure in the U.S., with Congress members Tom Emmer and Warren Davidson going as far as introducing a proposed ‘SEC Stabilization Act’ that would restructure the agency and essentially remove Gensler from his post.
