Cryptocurrency Risks Highlighted By SEC In FY2024 Budget Request Of $2.4 Billion

In a statement, Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said that he cooperates with vice president Biden's request to allocate $2.4 billion to the agency during the fiscal year of 2024, which would be used primarily for hiring 170 additional employees.

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According to Gensler in his testimony to Congress on Wednesday, the SEC is seeking the funding so that it can deal with the possibility of enforcing securities regulations more aggressively as the financial markets experience growth and change.

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For the fiscal year of 2023, Gensler said, the number of SEC positions funded by Congress was 5,303, which was an increase of 400 from the fiscal year of 2022. 

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Over the course of the next two years, Gensler noted that the average number of daily transactions in equity markets will increase from 30 million in 2017 to over 77 million in 2022. As a result, Gensler said a variety of technological advancements, such as electronic trading, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, have been transforming the way markets and business models are planned and run. 

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Moreover, Gensler also pointed out that the crypto industry remains largely unregulated and, for this reason, represents a number of risks for investors. As a result of noncompliance, the crypto markets have become to look like the Wild West of the cryptocurrency world, where investors have risked their hard-earned assets on a highly speculative and volatile market," Gensler comments. 

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There were over 750 enforcement actions filed by the SEC's enforcement department in fiscal year 2022, an increase of 9% over the same period last year, according to the SEC. According to Gensler, the sanctions imposed upon the company resulted in penalties and disgorgement orders totaling $6.4 billion. 

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According to Gensler, the agency's examinations department completed more than 3,000 examinations in fiscal year 2022 across a spectrum of its registrants, including advisers, brokers, and exchanges.