After the U.S. Senate Banking Committee voted 14-10 in favor of Gary Gensler, the cryptocurrency market today jumped by about 3%, reaching the market cap of $1.7 trillion, Finance Magnates reports. Gensler was nominated by President Joe Biden to take the role of the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
A week ago, Gensler spoke about his thoughts on cryptocurrency regulations, specifically the importance of investor protection. During his confirmation hearing, Gensler also commented on viewing cryptocurrencies either as securities or utility tokens. According to his logic, Bitcoin is not a security, but coins like Ripple are.
The lawsuit between the SEC and Ripple started in December 2020 and is still ongoing. Last week, both the CEO Brad Garlinghouse and the Executive Chairman Chris Larsen filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit.
In the meantime, Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, posted gains of about 14% in the past 7 days and around 2.45% in the past 24 hours. It is trading at around $56,100 at the time of writing and has a market cap of over $1 trillion. The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, has gained about 14% in the past 7 days and lost about 2% in the past 24 hours. It is currently trading at around $1,770, per CoinMarketCap.com data.
