SEC Chair Gensler Resigns, Effective January 20, 2025

SEC Chair Gensler to Depart Agency on January 20

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that its 33rd Chair, Gary Gensler, will step down from the Commission effective at 12:00 pm on January 20, 2025. Chair Gensler began his tenure on April 17, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of the GameStop market events. He led the agency through a robust rulemaking agenda to enhance efficiency, resiliency, and integrity in the U.S. capital markets. He also oversaw high-impact enforcement cases to hold wrongdoers accountable and return billions to harmed investors.

U.S. SEC Loses Crypto Lawsuit Over ‘Dealer’ Definition That Pushed Into Crypto

A Texas federal court has rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent rule expanding the definition of a securities dealer to include a wider swath of firms — including some in the cryptocurrency sector. This adds a significant legal loss to the crypto legacy of SEC Chair Gary Gensler on the same day he announced his January departure.

In response to a lawsuit from the industry lobbying group Blockchain Association and the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted an early decision Thursday that slammed the SEC for overextending its legal reach. The court ordered that the rule be thrown out.

SEC Enforcement Actions Against Public Companies and Subsidiaries Drop by 12% in FY 2024; Actions Still Up Nearly 5% Compared to Historical Average

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated 80 enforcement actions against public companies and subsidiaries in fiscal year 2024, marking a 12% decline from FY 2023 but still up nearly 5% compared to the nine-year historical average, according to a report released today by Cornerstone Research and the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business. Meanwhile, total monetary settlements grew to $1.5 billion in FY 2024, up from $1.3 billion the previous year, although still below the $1.8 billion average observed between FY 2015 and FY 2023.

The report, SEC Enforcement Activity: Public Companies and Subsidiaries—Fiscal Year 2024 Update, analyzes information from the Securities Enforcement Empirical Database (SEED). This year’s report is also available in a new, interactive format that enables readers to better engage with the data.

US Audit Regulator Pitches Slower-Growth $400 Million Budget

The US audit board approved a $399.7 million spending plan that would maintain its current staffing into 2025 while continuing to upgrade technology tools available to its staff.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s budget represents a nearly 4% increase over the regulator’s current $385 million in funding, which paid for adding 20 jobs to the board’s inspections division over the past year. The expected spending increase represents a sharp drop from double-digit rate increases the previous two budget cycles.

Board members on Thursday voted 4-1 to adopt the PCAOB’s 2025 budget and send it to the Securities and Exchange ….

Gary Gensler, We Won’t Miss You

Gary Gensler is stepping down. And no one in crypto is going to miss the SEC chair. Under his tenure, the lead U.S. securities regulator led a wide-ranging campaign against digital assets companies that was both damaging and frequently unfair. Meanwhile, Gensler offered no clarity to crypto companies wanting to do business the right way. At times, it seemed that Gary, along with his ally, Senator Elizabeth Warren, simply wanted to let crypto die on the vine — such was their obvious distaste for the industry and its arguments.

Having said all this, let’s take a step back and consider Gensler’s crypto legacy in a wider context. Was the lack of regulatory support for crypto all his fault? Or, did he at times become a convenient scapegoat for problems that still exist in financial regulation?

Binance Boosts Compliance Staff by 34% Year-Over-Year, Citing Industry’s ‘Rapid Maturation’

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, says it expects to have 645 full-time compliance employees on staff by the end of the year — a 34% increase from last November — as it continues to rapidly build out its compliance department.

Including contractors, the crypto exchange already has over 1,000 employees focused on compliance, according to a Friday press statement from Binance.

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Todd McElduff, Binance’s new enterprise compliance director, who will spearhead the exchange’s relationships with global law enforcement agencies, previously led the global financial crimes oversight division at PayPal. Before that, he was head of a financial crime division at Morgan Stanley.