Mark Uyeda, a commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission since 2022, was named acting chief of the agency by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Uyeda, a Republican and lawyer by trade, will hold down the fort while Trump’s pick to succeed Gary Gensler as chair of the SEC, Paul Atkins, works his way through the Senate confirmation process.
“I am honored to serve in this capacity after serving as a commissioner since 2022 and a member of the staff since 2006,” Uyeda said in a statement on Jan. 21. “I have great respect for the knowledge, expertise, and experience of the agency and its people. The SEC has a vital mission—protecting investors; maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitating capital formation—that plays a key role in promoting innovation, jobs creation, and the American dream.”
Uyeda has pushed to open private markets to more investors and opposed Democratic efforts to restrict cryptocurrency markets and increase environmental, social, and governance disclosures since joining the SEC, Bloomberg noted.
Uyeda was first sworn into office as a commissioner on June 30, 2022, after being confirmed by the Senate. He was subsequently re-nominated and confirmed for a five-year term expiring in 2028. He served in various counsel and advisory roles at the SEC before becoming a commissioner, including as counsel to Atkins during his time as SEC commissioner from 2006 to 2008.
Before joining the SEC, Uyeda worked as securities counsel for former U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey on the Senate Banking Committee and was previously appointed by former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as chief advisor to the California Corporations Commissioner, the state’s securities regulator.
Earlier in his career, he worked as a corporate and securities attorney at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart (now K&L Gates) in Washington, D.C. and O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles.
Uyeda’s first major announcement as acting SEC chief was the creation of a new crypto task force, which will be led by fellow Republican SEC commissioner Hester Peirce.
“I look forward to the efforts of commissioner Peirce to lead regulatory policy on crypto, which involves multiple SEC divisions and offices,” Uyeda said on Tuesday.
The task force’s focus will be to help the SEC draw clear regulatory lines, provide realistic paths to registration, craft sensible disclosure frameworks, and deploy enforcement resources judiciously, according to a media release. It will also coordinate with federal departments and agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and state and international counterparts.
The media release on the task force’s formation criticizes the SEC’s prior actions under the leadership of Gensler, a fierce cryptocurrency critic who resigned on Monday when Trump took office.
“Drawing from talented staff across the agency, the task force will collaborate with commission staff and the public to set the SEC on a sensible regulatory path that respects the bounds of the law. To date, the SEC has relied primarily on enforcement actions to regulate crypto retroactively and reactively, often adopting novel and untested legal interpretations along the way. Clarity regarding who must register, and practical solutions for those seeking to register, have been elusive. The result has been confusion about what is legal, which creates an environment hostile to innovation and conducive to fraud. The SEC can do better,” the media release says.
Peirce repeatedly joined Uyeda in dissenting from Gensler’s actions regarding crypto. In 2018, pro-crypto Redditors nicknamed Peirce “Crypto Mom” after she dissented from the SEC’s rejection of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, according to Quartz.
“This undertaking will take time, patience, and much hard work. It will succeed only if the task force has input from a wide range of investors, industry participants, academics, and other interested parties. We look forward to working hand-in-hand with the public to foster a regulatory environment that protects investors, facilitates capital formation, fosters market integrity, and supports innovation,” Peirce said in a statement.
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Tags: Digital Currency, SEC
