Before officially taking over, can the SEC's "dialogue governance" make the encryption circle prosperous?

Article author, source: 0x9999in1, MetaEra

In the first quarter of 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s regulatory style in the crypto space quietly changed. With the end of the Gary Gensler era, the SEC led by Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda began to try “conversational governance”, setting up an encryption task team, ending multiple crypto case investigations, and launching a series of industry roundtables. Does this series of actions mean that the SEC is moving from "confrontational regulation" to a more moderate collaboration model? Before the new chairman takes office, can the SEC's adjustments really push the crypto industry to a new stage of parallel compliance and innovation?

The key actions of the SEC in the past three months: from "law

enforcement leading" to "dialogue governance"

Since acting chairman Mark Uyeda took office in January 2025, the SEC's regulatory strategy in the field of crypto has undergone significant adjustments and has deliberately set up an encryption task team. The crypto task force led by Hester Peirce, the move symbolizes a major shift in regulatory policy. It is expected to prioritize which crypto assets belong to "securities" and explore channels for legal issuance of tokens. This move may bring a clearer regulatory framework to the market and attract more traditional financial institutions to the crypto field.

Recently, the SEC also announced that it will hold four new round tables from April to June 2025, covering issues such as crypto trading, custody, asset tokenization and DeFi. The time and themes of the four public roundtables are: April 11 "Tailed Supervision for Crypto Trading |, April 25 "Key Issues of Custody Institutions", May 12 "Asset On-chain and Traditional Finance Integration", and June 6 "DeFi and American Spirit".

It is worth mentioning that these meetings are open to the public, which SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce calls “a spring sprint with clear crypto regulation”, indicating that the SEC is trying to create clearer rules through industry dialogue. He also publicly stated on March 25 that the crypto industry needs "clear and reasonable boundaries of regulatory power", implying that compliance may be promoted through rule refinement rather than litigation in the future.

This series of changes is not only reflected in the establishment of groups, roundtables, etc., but a set of data will be more intuitive. According to official SEC documents, the term "blockchain" in the document reached an all-time high in February 2025 (more than 5,000 records in the EDGAR database), which also reflects a significant increase in its attention to the crypto industry.

SEC terminates investigations on multiple crypto cases, sending slowdowns

As of March 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) law enforcement dynamics in the cryptocurrency field did see some adjustments, some cases ended with settlement, withdrawal of lawsuits or termination of investigations, showing some signs of regulatory easing.

In January 2025, the SEC concluded its investigation into Hinman documents-related cases and did not make a new ruling on whether Ethereum is a securities company;

In 2023, Kraken paid $30 million in settlement for providing unregistered "Stake-as-a-Service", but the SEC reserves the right to investigate further. In February 2025, the SEC formally terminated the investigation and no additional penalties were imposed;

The SEC has previously accused multiple NFT issuers (such as Impact Theory and Stoner Cats) of violating securities laws and believed that their NFTs were investment contracts. In December 2024, the SEC quietly dropped some lawsuits, retaining only enforcement of projects that clearly promise returns, such as Ponzi scheme-like NFTs.

The SEC has accused a DeFi protocol (anonymously) of circumventing securities laws through governance token management. A settlement was reached in March 2025, and the parties to the agreement agreed to register some functions and pay a small fine, and the SEC terminated the investigation;

The SEC has tried to accuse Tornado Cash developers of violating securities laws because their privacy tools were used to launder money. In January 2025, the SEC abandoned the lawsuit and turned to coordinate supervision with the Ministry of Finance (OFAC).

In March 2025, the US SEC terminated its investigation into Immutable and related parties and found no violations. Immutable President Robbie Ferguson said that the move brought regulatory clarity to the Web3 gaming industry and is expected to drive more institutional investment;

In March 2025, Ripple reached a preliminary settlement with the SEC, which agreed to refund $75 million of the $125 million fine ruled by the court last year, leaving only $50 million to close the case. In exchange, Ripple will withdraw its cross appeal.

Future Outlook: Policy Direction after the New Chairman takes office

At present, the SEC is still at the helm of Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda, who has adjusted some of the crypto policies during his takeover, such as suspending plans to register crypto companies as a trading system and promoting the establishment of a cryptocurrency task force, which is considered to be paving the way for the transition period.

Paul Atkins is a Trump-nominated candidate for SEC chairmanship, and his appointment is seen as an important signal to promote friendly regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. He has extensive financial regulatory experience, has served in the SEC and supports innovation and decentralized asset development. However, Paul Atkins is currently facing doubts about conflicts of interest. His investments in crypto (such as Security and Pontoro) and family assets (total value of over $327 million) have raised concerns about his regulatory impartiality, but he promised to resign from his current position and sell the relevant equity if appointed.

The nomination of new SEC chairman Paul Atkins is still in the Senate hearing stage, which is scheduled to be held on March 27, 2025, when Paul Atkins needs to respond to questions from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and others about his connection to the crypto industry.

If Paul Atkins can officially take over, it may promote legislative processes such as the Digital Asset Market Structure Act, reduce regulatory overlap, and clarify the standards for the division of securities and non-securities tokens.

Conclusion

The SEC's adjustment in the past three months marks its attempt to transform from "confrontational supervision | to "dialogue governance". If the SEC can continue to promote a transparent and reasonable regulatory framework and give priority to the formulation of specific rules for stablecoins, pledge services, and DeFi protocols, the United States may become the top priority of global crypto innovation centers; conversely, if policies are repeated, crypto projects may still choose to move to more regulated-friendly areas. In any case, 2025 will be a key turning point in the relationship between the SEC and the crypto industry.