The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Thursday that it changed its cryptographic assets and its cyber unit to the “Cyber and emerging technology unit”. The regulator said that its new unit “will focus on the fight against Cyber -related misconduct and to protect retail investors against bad players in the space of emerging technologies”.
The newly renamed unit will be made up of approximately 30 specialists and lawyers for fraud across the dry, led by Laura d’AliS, who was appointed Co-chief of cryptographic assets and cyberbullying in December. Before that, breastfeeding has occupied various roles in the past three years at the SEC, including a principal lawyer for the application of the application and the lawyer for Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga.
Among the opportunity of the unit, there will be fraud committed using emerging technologies; The use of social media, dark web or false websites to perpetrate fraud; Piracy for obtaining non -public material information, control of retail brokerage accounts, fraud involving blockchain technology and cryptographic assets; Compliance with cybersecurity rules and regulations; and the fraudulent disclosure of the public transmitter relating to cybersecurity.
“Under the direction of Laura, this new unit will complete the work of the working group on the crypto led by Commissioner Hester Peirce. Above all, the new unit will also allow the dry to judiciously deploy the application resources, ”said acting president Mark Uyeda in a press release. “The unit will not only protect investors, but will also facilitate capital training and market efficiency by opening the way to innovation. He will disentangle those who seek to abuse innovation to harm investors and reduce confidence in new technologies. »»
Uyeda’s vision for the reworked unit represents a change compared to the Biden administration, which launched cryptographic assets and cyberbullying in 2022 and describe His work as seeking to “take advantage of the agency’s expertise to ensure that investors are protected in cryptographic markets”. The unit of 50 people was also responsible for investigating violations of securities law linked to the exchanges of cryptographic assets, offers, loan products and jalititude, decentralized financing platforms, non -fascinating tokens and to stablescoins.
The unit was part of a greater administration effort in Biden to regulate the emerging markets of cryptocurrencies, which, according to them, had become endemic with fraud and presented a destabilizing threat to the financial markets.
Between 2021 and 2024, the agency brought a legal action and charged against 89 entities linked to cryptocurrency fraud and not recorded asset offers and platforms, according to the a list On the SEC website. This includes actions against Sam Bankman Fried, the CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange company, which was found guilty of having frauds thousands of investors over billions of dollars. In addition, unity has brought legal action against Binance, one of the largest corporate contracting companies in the world, for violations of securities law.
President Donald Trump, however, has largely adopted the cryptocurrency industry during his campaign and has installed or appointed Industry Allies In key positions Through the government since its entry into office.
These links, as well as the brand change, have led some former agency officials to worry that the SEC could abandon its emphasis on the regulations and application of the crime linked to the cryptocurrency.
John Stark Reed, former head of the DRI Internet application office, commented changes in adage “Glue a fork in the application of the dry crypto, it’s done.”
In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Reed wrote that the areas of development of the renamed unit of the SEC were a case of “return to the future” for the agency.
“About 27 years ago, the SEC created the” Internet application office “, to do almost the same thing as this new application of the dry” C2 “, Reed wrote.
But there are other reasons to doubt that the dry continues the solid application of cryptographic assets. Paul Atkins, Trump’s candidate for the President of the SEC, as well asndew Vollmer, former deputy general councilor and current advisor to the acting president of the SEC, Mark Uyeda, were among the main authors of a chapter of the 2025 project dry focused.
THE chapter Refers both to the dry and the commodity future trading commission as “irresponsible actors in the zone of digital assets” and accuses agencies of dragging their feet on the promulgation of formal rules to govern digital assets like the crypto -cash.
The authors also adopt a low vision of their dependence on the application to bring the actors of the cryptocurrency in accordance with the federal law.
The two agencies “chose the regulations by application – and did it badly,” continues the chapter. “They do not adequately protect investors or provide participants in the regulatory environmental market they need to thrive.”
Other observers say that if it is certainly possible that the brand change increases a less energetic approach around the application of cryptocurrencies by the dry, it is not a fact.
The description of the new unit always lists “fraud involving blockchain technology and cryptographic assets” among its areas of interest. Michael Daniel, former cyber coordinator at the White House under the Obama administration, told Cyberscoop that name change could be a means for the unit of distancing from its roots of the Biden era while retaining a large part of its main original objective.
“By putting my Washington hat and having undergone transitions, the fact that you withdraw the crypto ” by the name, could help reduce the probability that it is targeted by the anger of the White House,” said Daniel. “This does not mean that it will not necessarily make cryptographic surveys.”
Daniel has also declared that the enlargement of the mission of the unit to monitor emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computer science is logical, whatever the way the administration applies crimes related to cryptocurrency cash.
“It is not completely ridiculous for me to imagine that the dry says that” we must look beyond crypto and fintech, and to really think about how a whole series of emerging technologies affects the markets of securities and protects investors, ”it adds.
