13th April 2025 > > The Crypto Task Force.

tl;dr

The second of the five Crypto Task Force’s roundtables has raised some exciting prospects. Crenshaw is back. I don’t know how that happened.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Next stop, QE:

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The Crypto Task Force

You will recall that Hester Peirce was nominated as head of The Crypto Task Force and charged with the responsibility to define the future of crypto regulation in the US. Hester explains her thinking:

“The Crypto Task Force roundtables are an opportunity for us to hear a lively discussion among experts about what the regulatory issues are and what the Commission can do to solve them.”

Titled as “The Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity”, the inaugural session’s topic on March 19th was “How We Got Here and How We Get Out – Defining Security Status”:

The subsequent sessions were planned as follows:

April 11, 2025 – Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading

April 25, 2025 – Know Your Custodian: Key Considerations for Crypto Custody

May 12, 2025 – Tokenization - Moving Assets Onchain: Where TradFi and DeFi Meet

June 6, 2025 – DeFi and the American Spirit

…

Acting Chair of the SEC, Mark Uyeda, made the opening remarks at the roundtable held two days ago. You can read them in full here:

https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/uyeda-remarks-ctf-roundtable-crypto-trading-041125

Mark raises some of the key issues facing the crypto industry and its relationship with the regulator.

His favoured approach is a federal regulatory framework rather than the patchwork of partial state regulation in place today. You do not need reminding that the highest priority for Gensler and Warren was to obstruct any form of federal regulation. That has now changed, and for the better.

He highlights inconsistencies in the treatment of non-tokenised securities, and the tokenised version of those securities, and specifically the limitation of the “order book” rules which have formed the cornerstone of securities regulation when it comes to the execution of clients’ orders by intermediaries:

“The drafters of the federal securities laws did not contemplate the use of blockchains or smart contracts to perform the functions of a transfer agent, facilitate the exchange of securities, or clear securities transactions.”

He then makes a very interesting suggestion which opens the way forward to turbo-charging crypto innovation and development within the US:

“While the Commission works to develop a long-term solution to address these issues, a time-limited, conditional exemptive relief framework for registrants and non-registrants could allow for greater innovation with blockchain technology within the United States in the near term.  I encourage market participants that are developing new ways to trade securities using blockchain technology to provide input on where exemptive relief may be appropriate.”

Nice.

…

Caroline Crenshaw also made an appearance at this event, which is both surprising and disappointing. It had seemed that her attempt to be retained as an SEC commissioner had failed as reported in the CCC:

https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/19th-december-2024-crenshaw-is-a-goner

Somehow, she snuck back in. As a senior lieutenant in Warren’s anti-freedom and anti-liberty army, her presence will be a distraction going forward. She was the only commissioner to vote against approving spot BTC ETFs, though Gensler and the SEC had been described by a judge as being “arbitrary and capricious” in their opposition to the ETFs.

No doubt she will continue to be the lone voice of Luddism, and authoritarianism.