With just days left until his exit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Chair Gary Gensler once again took aim at the cryptocurrency industry, arguing that it is "rife" with bad actors. 

Gensler pointed to the fact that public knows a lot about Bitcoin, which accounts for 80% of the market value. 

However, there are also thousands of projects that lack fundamentals, according to the SEC boss. 

"And then there's everything else…These 10,000 or 15,000 projects… I've never seen a field that's so much wrapped up in sentiment and not so much about fundamentals," he said. 

Gensler has predicted that many of them will not survive, comparing them to venture capital investments. He also added that there is a fair amount of "pump-and-dump schemes."

Defending the crypto crackdown

Speaking of his upcoming departure, Genser said that it was "a great privilege" to serve as the head of the SEC. 

"What's remarkable about this role is it oversees the $120 trillion capital market, which touches everything in our economy," he said. 

Even though though Gensler's legal fights with the cryptocurrency have attracted most of the headlines, he stressed that it was an insignifincat part of the SEC's activities.

"It's maybe about 5% of what we do in our law enforcement," he stressed.  

Gensler stressed that Jay Clayton, his predecessor, also brought 80 cryptocurrency-related enforcement actions in this area.