Gary Gensler – chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – sat down with CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer on Wednesday to discuss the regulator’s Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF approvals, alongside what may be coming next.
That included questions about whether obscure meme coins could soon receive their own ETFs, such as SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Bonk (BONK).
Cramer named a host of coins to Gensler that had all traded “millions of dollars” on Wednesday morning – including Cardano, Cosmos, Immutable, Ronin, and MyNeighborAlice, among others.“Now in two weeks, should we have a SushiSwap ETF?” asked Cramer. “I would think that Bonk is a natural, and Osmosis. These are millions of dollars these things are trading – shouldn’t we have some sort of product?”
Gensler did not provide specific answers to those questions, but noted that many of the crypto tokens generally “have not given you the disclosures you need to make investment decisions,” implying that such tokens are unregistered securities.He also called out crypto exchange platforms, which are “doing things we would never allow our New York Stock Exchange to do.”“You’ve seen the bankruptcies in this space,” Gensler said. “The most leading lights in this field are either in jail, about to go to jail, or awaiting extradition.”Gensler also commented on the Ethereum spot ETF approvals late last month, which he said will still “take some time” before their registration statements are approved and they can be listed on public exchanges.When previously questioned on the matter, BlackRock’s Head of Digital Assets said the fund had little interest in launching altcoin ETFs, with Bitcoin being the “overwhelming top priority” among its client base.