SEC chairman Gary Gensler under fire

The air is getting thinner for SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. After the lawsuit against Consensys, now a U.S. congressman is attacking the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The chairman of the US House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, has made harsh accusations against SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

He accuses Gensler of "knowingly misleading" Congress during a hearing. McHenry is referring to alleged attempts by the SEC to make the second-largest cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) to be classified as a security.

"Chairman Gensler declined to answer questions about the SEC's classification of Ether," he said. wrote McHenry on Twitter. "New court records show that this was a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the Commission's position."

He is referring to allegations made by software development company Consensys in a recent lawsuit.

The company, best known for its popular MetaMask wallet, on April 25 filed a filing lawsuit against the SEC.

Consensys' lawsuit against the SEC seeks a legal determination that "ETH is not a security within the meaning of the Securities Act and that Consensys' sale of ETH is not a sale of securities."

Documents in the recently filed lawsuit describe how the SEC conducted an investigation into the nature of Ether just days before Gensler's appearance before Congress in April 2023.

Whether Ether is a commodity or a security is one of the key questions for crypto-regulation in the US. The future of Ether Spot ETFs also depends on it.