The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will vote on December 11 to re-nominate Caroline Crenshaw, a U.S. SEC commissioner and cryptocurrency skeptic, and several crypto industry executives have expressed disappointment at the possibility of her re-election. Crenshaw was one of two SEC commissioners who voted against approving a spot Bitcoin ETF in January.
Coinbase President and COO Emilie Choi said: "Caroline Crenshaw is against cryptocurrency. She is even embarrassingly against Bitcoin ETFs. The SEC must make changes."
Alexander Grieve, vice president of government affairs at crypto investment agency Paradigm, said that Crenshaw's departure would be "the last 'gift' for the cryptocurrency industry, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown is trying to force through the re-nomination of anti-cryptocurrency SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw."
Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said that Crenshaw is not only an "ally" of SEC Chairman and cryptocurrency skeptic Gary Gensler, but also more "strongly opposed to cryptocurrency" than Gensler himself.
"Just read her letter of opposition to the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January," Seyffart said, adding that another opposing SEC Commissioner, Jaime Lizárraga, "didn't even join the position she expressed in the letter." After the SEC approved the issuance of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States on January 10, Crenshaw, who was sworn in as an SEC commissioner in August 2020, said the SEC's move to approve the ETF was "unreasonable and unhistorical." Austin Campbell, CEO of digital payment company WSPN, said he wanted to "remind all Democrats that Caroline Crenshaw voted that the SEC should defy the order of a federal judge, violate the law, and reject BTC ETFs after being ordered by the court to approve them." (Cointelegraph) Earlier, the U.S. Senate will vote next week on whether to re-nominate SEC Democratic Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw.