SEC Announces FY 2025 Enforcement Results, Says Prior Administration Brought Cases "Not Sufficiently Grounded in Federal Securities Laws.”

SEC Announces Enforcement Results for Fiscal Year 2025

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced enforcement results for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2025.

Central to an effective enforcement program is determining which cases to bring and responsibly stewarding Commission resources. Regrettably, such resources have been misapplied in prior years to pursue media headlines and run up numbers, and in turn, led to misguided expectations on what constitutes effective enforcement.

Fiscal Year 2025 Results & Supporting Context

During fiscal year 2025, the Commission filed 456 enforcement actions, including 303 standalone actions and 69 “follow-on” administrative proceedings seeking to bar or suspend individuals from certain functions in the securities markets based on criminal convictions, civil injunctions, or other orders, and obtaining orders for monetary relief totaling $17.9 billion. These enforcement actions addressing a broad range of misconduct demonstrate the Commission’s prioritization of cases that directly harm investors and the integrity of the U.S. securities markets, including offering frauds, market manipulation, insider trading, issuer disclosure violations, and breaches of fiduciary duty by investment advisers.

Regulation by hostility: the real legacy of Biden-era crypto policy

Former Biden economic advisers Ryan Cummings and Jared Bernstein would have you believe the decline in bitcoin’s price from its 2025 peak somehow vindicates their administration’s approach to cryptocurrency. A masterclass in selective memory, their February 26 New York Times opinion piece omits the most consequential fact about Biden-era crypto policy: it was not a reasoned regulatory framework.

The authors credit the Biden administration with “increasingly aggressive regulatory efforts to curb scams and fraud.” This framing is extraordinary, given what happened on their watch. FTX grew to enormous scale during the Biden administration. Sam Bankman-Fried was a top Democratic donor and met with senior administration officials (including then-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler) while running what became one of the largest financial frauds in history.

The administration’s strategy of regulation-by-enforcement, rather than establishing clear rules, had a perverse effect: legitimate, compliance-minded companies were driven offshore or out of business, consumers were harmed, and American innovation was stifled. Meanwhile, bad actors like Bankman-Fried (who knew how to play political games) thrived in the confusion. When you refuse to write clear rules, the only people who benefit are those who never intended to follow them.

4 Takeaways From Our Search for Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s Creator

It has been 17 years since a nine-page white paper appeared in an obscure corner of the internet and ushered in the world’s first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has grown from a curiosity to a mainstream fixture of the financial landscape. Yet the identity of its inventor has remained unknown, concealed behind the now-famous pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

I spent more than a year digging into Satoshi’s identity, sifting through thousands of decades-old internet postings. With the help of computer-assisted reporting provided by my colleague Dylan Freedman, I amassed a body of evidence pointing to Adam Back, a 55-year-old British cryptographer. Mr. Back denied that he was Satoshi, and chalked it all up to a series of coincidences.

Here is what we learned….

SEC Scales Back Market Surveillance Tool, Raises Oversight Concerns

The SEC has taken steps aimed at reducing the cost of the CAT but observers say these measures weaken the commission’s ability to police the markets.

In January, the SEC eliminated the requirement that the CAT collect certain personally identifiable information like addresses, names and dates of birth.

The SEC has acknowledged that not collecting personal information could “negatively impact regulatory efficiency” by making it harder to link transaction data to specific individuals. But the commission concluded the benefits of collecting and storing sensitive personal information did not justify the risks posed by a potential data breach.

And in March, the SEC said it would delete information collected in the CAT older than three years despite the statute of limitations for securities fraud being five years.