The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reassigned its top crypto litigator, Jorge Tenreiro, to a new role in the agency’s Information Technology (IT) division.
According to WSJ report, Tenreiro was involved in many high-profile cases that involved bringing the crypto market under regulation. He oversaw several cases against crypto exchanges.
The lawsuit suits were critical to defining the extent of authority that the SEC has over the volatile market. His reassignment is just one of the agency’s new strategies to change its approach towards the crypto space.
Meanwhile, this approach also involves the resignation of another attorney, Natasha Guinan. She was among the controversial accounting counsel that made it difficult for banks to manage crypto assets for their clients.
SEC is making the new decisions due to political pressure. Many prominent political figures have started embracing crypto, even President Donald Trump has gone as far as launching his own digital token.
Moreover, Trump signed an executive order last month calling for a new regulatory framework for crypto. All this is to counter the toxic political environment left by the previous SEC’s administration.
The agency has also made some changes in its leadership. For instance, Acting SEC Chairman Mark Uyeda has shown that he would revoke the aggressive enforcement approach taken by former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Gensler focused his policy on lawsuits to regulate the crypto environment, trying to bring more of it under SEC jurisdiction. The new direction, led by Uyeda, aims to create a more clear and improved regulatory pathway for crypto companies.
Jason Gottlieb, a defense attorney for crypto firms, expressed his disagreement with the SEC’s litigation strategy under Tenreiro. He believed that writing new rules for the industry would have been a better solution. Gottlieb described Tenreiro as “a hell of a good litigator and a bulldog, but an ethical bulldog.”
As the SEC repositions itself under new leadership, it is looking at potential ways to offer temporary amnesty to crypto issuers who provide basic disclosures to investors. This could allow crypto assets to trade freely on exchanges without ongoing SEC scrutiny.
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