Ex-SEC acting chair: Agency dropped crypto cases to avoid issues with credibility

SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said that the agency dropped many cases against crypto companies in early 2025 to avoid potential credibility problems in court.

Mark Uyeda, who served as acting chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before Paul Atkins’s confirmation, said the agency dropped civil cases against cryptocurrency companies filed under the previous administration because it was preparing a “180-degree change” in rulemaking.

In a Wednesday panel at the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy’s Financial Markets Quality Conference, Uyeda said the SEC dropped cases involving crypto companies in early 2025 as it could have hurt the agency’s credibility in arguing positions in court contrary to its planned policy changes. Uyeda argued that there had been “significant concerns” that the cases against crypto companies were “justifiable under law.”

“I’m not about to have our litigators, even though they’re having cases that were authorized under the prior administration, stand up in court and have a commission interpretation be issued that is a 180-degree change from what they’d been arguing for that court,” said the commissioner. “I think that hurts [our] credibility as an agency.”

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