On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump announced that he has designated SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda as Acting Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Similarly, Trump elevated sitting EEOC Commissioner Andrea R. Lucas to Acting Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.)
The Republican government official has served as a SEC Commissioner since June 2022 after President Joe Biden nominated Uyeda to fill a vacant seat on the SEC, making Uyeda one of two Republicans on the five member body.
(Note: Hester Peirce is the other Republican. She was originally nominated by President Barack Obama for the job in 2015 but the Senate Banking Committee blocked the nomination; Trump’s nomination of Peirce went through in 2017. She is still a Commissioner.)
Uyeda, a Georgetown and Duke Law graduate, has been working at the SEC since 2006, when he became an attorney and advisor at agency. Uyeda worked with Trump’s former SEC chair Jay Clayton (2017-2020), who has recently been selected to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the second Trump administration.
On a recent appearance on Fox News (below), Uyeda said: “The war on crypto needs to stop.” He added that a goal in the second Trump administration is “to make America one of the global leaders in crypto.”
[NOTE: Trump originally had doubts about the crypto industry, but changed his mind. Crypto companies including Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood and Circle all made 7-figure donations to Trump’s inaugural fund, Politico reports.]
PR0 #BITCOIN AND CRYPTO MARK UYEDA IS NOW AN ACTING CHAIR OF THE SEC HE SAYS, “THE WAR ON CRYPTO MUST END.” pic.twitter.com/nIKC3NAXbl
— Vivek
(@Vivek4real_) January 20, 2025
When asked what the SEC is doing about crypto, Uyeda said (below) there’s “frustration” in the crypto industry as the government “has not provided interpretative guidance as to what you can and cannot do — and if you are involved in some sort of securities offering, how you register, how you get registered as a broker dealer, how you get registered on this exchange.”
Note: Crypto is popular but also controversial. The day after the inauguration, DOGE chair Elon Musk claimed that in addition to the pardons given to the approximately 1,500 January 6 rioters, Trump will also pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who is serving life in prison for creating and operating the darknet market website “that was popular for hosting money laundering activities and illegal drug transactions” using the crypto currency, Bitcoin.
Ross will be freed too
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2025