Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler will cause Joe Biden to lose the U.S. presidential election in November.

Commenting on the crypto industry at a Bloomberg Invest Summit in New York on Tuesday, Gensler said, "This is a field where the leading lights from a couple of years ago are either in jail, about to go to jail, or awaiting extradition.”

“That’s the field right now where the public has really been harmed. And there’s significant non-compliance in the field,” Gensler added.

“Absolute nonsense coming from Gary Gensler,” Garlinghouse responded on X. “And this slander about ‘all crypto execs going to jail’ from the man who completely missed FTX (and actually cozied up to SBF), and wasn’t even invited to the DOJ announcement about Binance.”

“If he was really ‘working for the American people’ as he says, he would have been fired a long time ago,” Garlinghouse added. “Gensler will cause Biden to lose the election.”

The SEC and Ripple have been embroiled in a legal fight since 2020 when the agency accused Ripple of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP, which it says is an unregistered security.

Last year, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that some of Ripple’s XRP sales, called programmatic, did not violate securities laws because of a blind bid process in place for them. She did, however, rule that other direct sales of the token to institutional investors constituted securities investment contracts.

Mark Cuban slams Gensler, says 'crypto voters will be heard' in the 2024 election

Garlinghouse isn’t the only voice to express such views, with billionaire entrepreneur and crypto investor Mark Cuban suggesting last month that the way in which cryptocurrency has been regulated in the U.S. will impact voters in the 2024 presidential election. 

"If Joe Biden loses, there is a good chance you will be able to thank Gary Gensler and the SEC," Cuban said at the time. "Crypto is a mainstay with younger and independent voters."

Cuban added that the SEC Chair had failed to properly protect investors against fraud, saying, "All he has done is make it nearly impossible for legitimate crypto companies to operate, killing who knows how many businesses and ruining who knows how many entrepreneurs."

Speaking at Coinbase’s State of Crypto Summit earlier this month, Cuban reiterated the comments, saying Gensler could “literally cost Joe Biden the election.”

In contrast, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has gone on record supporting crypto, accepting it for campaign donations and labeling Democrats and the Biden administration as anti-crypto.

Sources subsequently told The Block they noticed a significant “shift” in tone from the Biden administration and campaign toward crypto, with a new willingness to understand digital assets and their communities.

When asked at the event to react to billionaire Mark Cuban's accusations that Gensler himself would be to blame if President Biden loses the election, "I don't speak about elections," Gensler said.

Spot Ethereum ETFs progress ‘going smoothly’

At the same event on Tuesday, Gensler stayed mum on the launch timing of spot Ethereum ETFs in the U.S. However, he did say progress was going “smoothly.”

"It's really about the asset managers making the full disclosure so that those registration statements can go effective," Gensler said.

The SEC approved 19b-4 forms for eight Ethereum ETFs last month. Firms vying for those products still need their registration statements, called S-1s (or S-3, in the case of Grayscale, which is seeking to convert its Ethereum Trust to an ETF), to become effective before trading can begin, with Bloomberg ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart anticipating they could go live on July 2.