SEC Announces Participants for Crypto Trading Regulation Roundtable

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced the participants for an upcoming roundtable discussion focused on crypto trading regulation. Scheduled for April 11, the event, titled “Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading,” will be the second in a series of discussions led by the SEC's newly formed Crypto Task Force.

Notable participants include Katherine Minarik, Chief Legal Officer of Uniswap Labs, Chelsea Pizzola, Associate General Counsel of Cumberland DRW, and Gregory Tusar, Vice President of Institutional Product at Coinbase. These firms have previously been under the SEC's scrutiny, with lawsuits and investigations that were later dropped. The roundtable will also feature Jon Herrick, Product Chief of the New York Stock Exchange, Austin Reid, Business Lead of crypto brokerage FalconX, Richard Johnson, CEO of securities tokenizing firm Texture Capital, and Christine Parlour, Finance Chair at the University of California, Berkeley.

Additionally, Dave Lauer, co-founder of the advocacy group We the Investors, and Tyler Gellasch, CEO of the not-for-profit Healthy Markets Association, will participate. The discussion will be moderated by Nicholas Losurdo, a partner at law firm Goodwin Procter. Representing the SEC will be acting chair Mark Uyeda, Crypto Task Force chief of staff Richard Gabbert, and Commissioners Caroline Crenshaw and Hester Peirce.

This roundtable is part of a broader initiative by the SEC, dubbed the “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity,” which includes five discussions. The first, held on March 21, addressed the legal status of crypto. Future discussions will cover custody, tokenization, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The SEC's actions come as the agency, under the Trump administration, seeks to overhaul its oversight of the crypto industry. Acting chair Mark Uyeda has ordered a review of staff statements on crypto, which could potentially be modified or withdrawn. This review is in response to an executive order on deregulation and recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. The review includes seven staff statements, five of which pertain to crypto.

One of the statements under review is an April 2019 analysis from the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, which discussed how crypto sales could be considered investment contracts under the Howey test. Other statements include a May 2021 Division of Investment Management notice on the risks of funds with exposure to Bitcoin futures, a November 2020 statement on qualified custodians, a December 2022 Division of Corporation Finance notice on disclosures related to crypto firm bankruptcies, and a February 2021 Division of Examinations alert on the unique risks of digital asset securities.