SEC assembles ‘Suicide Squad’ of former critics for crypto roundtable

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission volition big different crypto regularisation roundtable connected April 11, attracting information from executives and advocates who antecedently clashed with the agency.

The session, titled Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading, volition beryllium hosted astatine the SEC’s Washington D.C. office and live-streamed via its website.

Its sheet creation signals a displacement successful the Commission’s strategy nether Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce’s Crypto Task Force, seeking penetration from firms erstwhile successful regulatory crosshairs.

The roundtable volition diagnostic elder representatives from Uniswap Labs, Coinbase, Cumberland DRW, and Texture Capital, alongside fiscal academics and marketplace infrastructure veterans. Many attendees correspond firms oregon positions that person been progressive successful unfastened disputes oregon enforcement actions with the SEC, showcasing the intentional recalibration of dialog channels betwixt the bureau and the integer plus sector.

Legal Combatants Recast arsenic Advisors

Among the astir high-profile inclusions is Katherine Minarik, Chief Legal Officer astatine Uniswap Labs. Her institution received a Wells Notice successful 2024 for allegedly operating an unregistered speech and broker platform. Before joining Uniswap, Minarik led litigation astatine Coinbase during its protracted conflict with the SEC, which included an enforcement suit and investigatory probes.

The SEC has since dropped its lawsuit against Coinbase and closed its enquiry into Uniswap, perchance reflecting a strategical pivot toward engagement implicit litigation.

Similarly, Chelsea Pizzola, Associate General Counsel astatine Cumberland DRW, brings a inheritance marked by enforcement tension. In October 2024, her steadfast faced an SEC suit for executing billions successful crypto trades allegedly without due registration.

DRW has a way grounds of challenging regulatory boundaries, including a palmy ineligible contention against the CFTC during Gary Gensler’s tenure. Pizzola has publically described the firm’s failed attempts to registry its crypto broker-dealer, underlining the unresolved frictions that present framework her relation connected the panel.

Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s Vice President of Institutional Product, volition besides appear, representing different steadfast formerly nether SEC scrutiny. Coinbase had been 1 of the astir salient targets of “regulation by enforcement” tactics, a exemplary present nether reconsideration.

Expert Witnesses with Contested Histories

The roundtable volition besides diagnostic Christine Parlour of UC Berkeley, a predominant world contributor to DeFi discourse. Parlour’s anterior effort to service arsenic an adept witnesser successful a crypto-related tribunal proceeding was rebuffed by the court, which cited the imaginable to mislead jurors and a deficiency of methodological rigor. Despite this, she present joins a captious regulatory roundtable arsenic a impermanent of the SEC.

Dave Lauer, Co-Founder of Urvin Finance and We the Investors, likewise has a contested record. Exchange operators person questioned his credibility arsenic an adept witnesser successful high-frequency trading litigation, critiquing his analysis’s foundational assumptions and sourcing.

Nevertheless, Lauer’s grassroots advocacy and anterior grounds earlier the Senate Banking Committee springiness him lasting successful regulatory conversations, peculiarly regarding marketplace fairness and transparency.

Regulatory Context Signals Policy Shift

The panelist enactment coincides with the broader question distant from punitive enforcement and toward participatory regulation.

Recent SEC decisions to terminate actions against firms similar Robinhood and Coinbase whitethorn beryllium confirmation that the epoch of enforcement-led crypto oversight is waning. Paul Atkins, a erstwhile SEC Commissioner present nominated to instrumentality arsenic Chairman, has advocated for pragmatic regulatory frameworks that clarify compliance expectations alternatively than enforce retroactive penalties.

Commissioner Peirce’s Crypto Task Force has positioned the roundtable bid arsenic a mechanics to stitchery stakeholder feedback and research nuanced approaches to rulemaking. The existent session, 1 of respective planned, represents a litmus trial for whether the Commission is prepared to impact antecedently adversarial voices successful designing the adjacent iteration of crypto governance.

Nicholas Losurdo, a erstwhile SEC advisor and present a spouse astatine Goodwin Procter LLP, volition mean the discussion. Losurdo’s relation successful bridging regulatory and manufacture perspectives whitethorn bespeak the intended code of the gathering: adversaries turned advisors, shaping a model that whitethorn yet specify the SEC’s aboriginal posture toward integer assets.

The station SEC assembles ‘Suicide Squad’ of erstwhile critics for crypto roundtable appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.

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