The SEC finally opened the doors. For the first time ever, the agency’s crypto task force sat down with industry people and talked face-to-face. No lawsuits. No enforcement threats. Just a public roundtable to figure out how securities laws apply to crypto.
This meeting happened on Friday, and it was packed with big names—John Reed Stark, Miles Jennings, Troy Paredes, and others. Hester Peirce, the Republican commissioner, is leading the charge to shape actual crypto guidance.
Peirce kicked it off by saying, “Spring signifies new beginnings and we have a new beginning here, a restart of the commission’s approach to crypto regulation.” Whether that means anything beyond words is still up in the air. But one thing’s clear—the rules around crypto are on the table, and they’re getting ripped open.
Trump pushes to scrap SEC crackdown
Trump’s plan is no secret. He wants to kill off what he calls the “Biden crypto crackdown.” His administration is rolling back lawsuits filed by the SEC under Biden. That includes high-profile ones against Coinbase and Kraken. A bunch of those cases are already getting paused or tossed out completely.
At the same time, Trump’s also ramping things up. This month, he signed an executive order to build a strategic crypto reserve. And just days before the roundtable, he held a summit at the White House with major crypto leaders.
All of this is happening while the industry still doesn’t even know what the hell counts as a security. That was the main focus on Friday. The SEC’s task force argued over whether crypto tokens should fall under the same rules as stocks, or if a new regulatory framework needs to be built.
Miles Jennings from a16z pushed for the second option. He told the commission to stop treating crypto like stocks, saying it needs a “technology-neutral” framework. He compared Ethereum to Apple, and said they’re not the same thing and shouldn’t be treated like they are.
On the other side, Caroline Crenshaw—a Democratic commissioner—said that loosening the rules for crypto could backfire. “Modifying the law to facilitate the success of a chosen product category is fraught with risk,” she said. She warned it could hurt other parts of the market too. So no surprise—no one agrees on anything.
John Reed Stark slams reform efforts
Meanwhile purely in character, John Reed Stark, former director of the Office of Internet Enforcement, trashed the idea of making new laws for crypto. Stark said the Securities Act of 1933 and 1934 don’t need to change. According to him, crypto assets already count as securities under current law.
“The people buying crypto are not collectors. We all know that they are investors, and the mission of the SEC is to protect investors,” Stark said. He ripped into crypto companies for dragging legal cases out and trying to dodge the rules. “They went for this sort of delay, delay, delay idea,” he said. “They hired the best law firms in the world… and they lost just about, I would argue, every single time.”
That wasn’t the only legal friction hanging over the event. The roundtable came right as the SEC dropped its historic lawsuit against Ripple. CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced it on Wednesday, sending XRP soaring for a moment before it cooled off. Even with that, XRP only ended the week slightly up.
Meanwhile, crypto markets stayed red overall. As of noon Friday, Bitcoin was down over 1%, floating around $83,000. Ether dropped 1% to just under $2,000, and XRP lost almost 3%. Bitcoin is now on its fourth straight red week, and Ether just barely avoided a fifth. XRP managed a second weekly gain in three weeks, but it didn’t hold the pump from midweek.
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