Wall Street’s New Cop Signals More Scrutiny of Crypto, SPACs (1)

Wall Street’s main regulator is signaling that the Biden era will spell tougher oversight for cryptocurrencies and blank-check companies, two of the white-hot market’s most talked-about asset classes.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler on Wednesday told lawmakers that special purpose acquisition companies and digital coins posed significant policy and investor-protection questions. He referred to SPACs, shell companies that list on stock exchanges for the purpose of buying other firms and making them public, as “blank-check IPOs.”

Gary Gensler

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The financial world has been anxiously waiting to see how Gensler will steer the SEC at a time when retail ...