SEC's Uyeda Says Enforcement and Regulation Under Biden Administration Was an "Outlier"

SEC’s Mark Uyeda Expects Slowdown in Rulemaking After ‘Ambitious’ Biden Era

The interim chief of the US Securities and Exchange Commission says he expects a slowdown in the Wall Street regulator’s rulemaking after three-and-half “overly ambitious” years of pursuing market reforms.

“The way I look at financial regulation is, we’re not a speedboat,” SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda said Thursday at the Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network Summit in New York. “Think of us as one of those really long, super-sized freighters. We may need to make course corrections, but you want to be very methodical, very thoughtful in how you change direction.”

Uyeda called out the breadth and the speed of SEC rulemaking under former Chair Gary Gensler, whose agenda included climate-risk disclosures, stock-trading reforms and crackdowns on crypto scofflaws.

Trump Signs Order Setting Up Bitcoin ‘Fort Knox’ and Digital Assets Stockpile

President Donald Trump has directed his administration to establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve to hold the assets that have been seized by the government, and he’s additionally called for a crypto stockpile of other types of assets.

At this point, all of the assets contemplated by the order would be those seized in civil or criminal forfeitures. The bitcoin will be stored for long-term value in what was termed a “digital Fort Knox.”

Trump Targets Law Firms Over Steele Dossier, Diversity Moves

President Donald Trump on Thursday suspended security clearances for Perkins Coie and ordered investigations of at least 15 law firms over diversity programs.

The directive targets Perkins Coie employees because the firm in 2016, while working for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, “hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election,” according to an executive order signed by Trump.

“It’s weaponization,” Trump said in the Oval Office, “you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”

Perkins Coie in a statement called the order “patently unlawful, and we intend to challenge it.”

The order also directs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate possible racial discrimination at “representative large, influential, or industry leading law firms.” The order doesn’t name the targets, but Trump asked aide Will Scharf, “You’re looking at about 15 different firms?” and Scharf responded, “That or more sir, yes.”

Brad Garlinghouse: The Polarizing Ripple CEO Who Wooed His Way Into Trump’s Orbit

Before the election, Ripple contributed $48 million to Fairshake, a group seeking to elect crypto-friendly candidates to Congress, and it has given tens of millions more since then. Ripple also donated $5 million worth of XRP to Trump’s inaugural committee.

Around Inauguration Day, Ripple plastered the Washington Metro with ads featuring the MAGA-aligned slogan “Ripple: American leadership in crypto.” The firm has hired lobbyists close to the Trump administration, and Garlinghouse has met legislators whose committees will craft bills outlining regulations for crypto.

Ripple’s campaign is an effort to win favorable treatment and persuade the White House to include XRP in the reserve, said Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University and critic of the cryptocurrency industry. “This is a gift to one specific company,” he said.

Trump to host White House crypto summit as he seeks to boost the industry

President Donald Trump will host cryptocurrency CEOs and investors at the White House on Friday, signaling a dramatic change in the fortunes of an industry with a reputation for scandals that has been treated with suspicion by financial regulators. […]

“It’s really extraordinary and gratifying to go from being in exile to being in the room where it happens,” Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer for Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, said in an interview Thursday ahead of the White House event. Source: