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	Good Wednesday morning. This is Billy Bambrough, bringing you today's batch of crypto news and analysis.

24-hour crypto market snapshot

$37,851

$2,483

$1.33

$135.33

On the edge


	Cryptocurrency prices are trading sideways today as traders try to judge the latest crypto comments made by chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler (see below for details). Watch out: For Gensler's 8am EDT interview on CNBC this morning. Bitcoin is down around 2% while most other top 10 coins are flat. Ethereum traders are holding their breath ahead of the hotly-anticipated EIP-1559 upgrade expected to go live early tomorrow morning. Cardano is a rare glimpse of green among a sea of red, with its ADA token holding onto gains made this week following a lengthy YouTube Q&A by founder Charles Hoskinson. Among smaller tokens, bitcoin SV, a payments-focused fork of bitcoin created in the aftermath of the 2017 blocksize wars, has suffered a "massive" 51% attack that may have been an attempt to destroy the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin SV, once a top ten cryptocurrency by value that's now ranked 42nd on CoinMarketCap, has lost 5% from its price after attackers attempted to seize control of its blockchain. Read the full story here.

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Gary's game

We all knew it was coming but yesterday we got a glimpse into how U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler views the crypto industry and market—and it ain't pretty.

🗣️ "This asset class is rife with fraud, scams and abuse in certain applications," Gensler told the Aspen Security Forum in a speech that can be read in full here. "We need additional congressional authorities to prevent transactions, products and platforms from falling between regulatory cracks."

Digital gold rush: Gensler sees bitcoin and crypto markets as a Wild West, saying "we just don’t have enough investor protection in crypto" and warning that many tokens may be unregistered securities that are open to manipulation.

"Primarily crypto assets provide a digital scarcity vehicle for speculative investment," Gensler said, adding: "Generally folks are buying these tokens in anticipation of profits."

By the numbers: The combined cryptocurrency market reached an eye-watering $2.5 trillion in April before around $1 trillion worth of value was erased. Almost 80 cryptocurrencies are worth at least $1 billion each and 1,600 are worth at least $1 million.

The good news: In what many are taking as a major win, Gensler signaled he sees a path toward approving the crypto Holy Grail, a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Gensler said that an ETF that complies with the SEC’s strict rules for mutual funds could provide investors with necessary protections.

"Given these important protections, I look forward to the staff’s review of such filings, particularly if those are limited to these CME-traded bitcoin futures," Gensler said. There are a number of applications to create a bitcoin ETF currently lodged with the SEC.

Going forward: Gensler wants lawmakers to give the SEC more power to oversee crypto lending and platforms like peer-to-peer decentralized finance (DeFi) sites that allow lenders and borrowers to transact in cryptocurrencies without traditional banks.

"If we don’t address these issues, I worry a lot of people will be hurt," he said.

Now watch: Gary Gensler's Office Hours interview

A crypto-based 'technological transformation' 🤖



	Legendary investor Marc Andreessen on stage in 2015 (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune)


	Society is in the midst of a "technological transformation" that includes crypto and blockchain, according to Silicon Valley polymath and legendary investor Marc Andreessen. "Many of the smartest people in computer science are going into [crypto]," Andreessen told Bloomberg this week. He thinks crypto and blockchain represent "a new kind of financial system" where people are "able to form trust relationships in an untrusted environment." In 2011, Andreessen, whose VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) counts $18 billion under management, wrote a now-famous Wall Street Journal op-ed titled Why Software Is Eating The World. 🕵️ On bitcoin's mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, keeping their identity a secret, Andreessen said: "This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Most people, when they invent something this profoundly breakthrough, don’t realize how important it is at the time they invent it. Whoever this person, or thing, AI, government agency, is—they knew the importance of what it was from the very beginning such that they knew it was important to hide their identity."

	Billy Bambrough
	Forbes Contributor

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.

Follow me on Twitter or email me.

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