Binance Tried to Hire Current US SEC Chair as Advisor, Wall Street Journal Reports

Binance made efforts to hire Gary Gensler as an advisor before he became the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair, but failed, Wall Street Journal reports.

The crypto exchange approached Gary Gensler in 2018 and 2019, when he was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Binance staff's internal texts, Ella Zhang, then head of Binance's venture investing arm, and Harry Zhou, co-founder of Binance-invested firm Koi Trading, met with Gensler in October 2018. Zhou said in a message, "I observe that while Gensler declined advisor-ship, he was generous in sharing license strategies." Then in March 2019, CZ met with Gensler in Tokyo.

It's reported that multiple companies wanted to hire Gensler as an advisor when he was at MIT, but he rejected all the offers. In April 2021, he became the SEC chair.