Paul Atkins, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, is keeping his promise to exorcise the spirit of Gary Gensler from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The new SEC chair just cast out the last of his predecessor’s lingering crypto proposals.
In one fell swoop on Thursday, the SEC withdrew more than a dozen unfinished rulemakings.
They included a controversial bid to redefine decentralised finance protocols as securities exchanges, impose stricter crypto custody standards, and overhaul how brokers handle order execution.
“Down goes 3b16, qualified custodian, and all the other unfinished Gensler rule proposals”, wrote Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal on Twitter. “The SEC just issued final notices rescinding them all.”
The rollback is the latest in a series of reversals that have already seen the SEC retreat from staking enforcement, market structure overhauls, and crypto litigation.