Gemini boycotts MIT hiring after Gary Gensler’s return

Gemini takes a firm stance in response to ex-SEC Head Gary Gensler’s return as an MIT professor, by refusing to hire its graduates.

Co-founder of Gemini, Tyler Winklevoss, said in a recent X post that the crypto exchange will stop hiring graduates from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The decision came shortly after it was announced that former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler will return to MIT’s Sloan School of Management as a professor and co-director of FinTechAI at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

“As long as MIT has any association with Gary Gensler, Gemini will not hire any graduates from this school. Not even interns for our summer intern program,” wrote Winklevoss in his post.

Ranked as the second-best university in the U.S. in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025, MIT is known as the alma mater of many crypto figureheads, including Executive Director & Co-Founder of Uniswap (UNI) Devin Walsh, co-founder of the Bitcoin (BTC) Foundation Patrick Murck and former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

According to RootData, there are at least 54 projects in the crypto sphere that were founded by MIT alumni.

On Jan. 29, MIT announced that former SEC Chairman and infamous crypto enemy Gary Gensler will be returning to the MIT’s Sloan School of Management as a Professor of the Practice in the Global Economics and Management Group and the Finance Group. He will be teaching artificial intelligence, finance, financial technology, and public policy.

He will have a specific role in the academic institution’s FinTech and AI research, as he will also be filling in as co-director of the FinTechAI at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT’s largest research lab.

Many crypto industry players have labeled Gensler as antagonistic towards crypto, due to his harsh stance on crypto. The SEC under Gensler’s leadership has been accused of waging war against the crypto industry by insisting all tokens distributed fall under securities.

Crypto industry’s crackdown on Gary Gensler’s SEC

Gemini is not the first crypto firm to cut ties with institutions associated with former officials linked to the Biden Administration. In early December, Coinbase said that it would stop working with firms that hire people linked to the Biden Administration’s “bad deeds” after law firm hired ex-SEC chief Gurbir Grewal as a partner.

“It’s an ethics violation in my book to try and unlawfully kill an industry while refusing to publish clear rules. If you were senior there, you cannot say you were just following orders,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in his post, encouraging other firms to do the same.

As Gary Gensler will be teaching a new generation of innovators and influencing their views on fintech, AI and most definitely crypto, many crypto traders see his return to MIT as a major disappointment.

UniSwap executive and MIT graduate Devin Walsh said that she felt “incredibly embarrassed and disappointed to see them rehire Gensler” and that joining the program would be “a waste of time, tuition funds, and energy” for students hoping to learn about new technologies in the finance field.