The Southern District of New York has reduced the prosecution of cryptocurrency companies, according to Scott Hartman, head of the Securities and Commodities Task Force. He pointed out that, during the lengthy bear market, several significant lawsuits were launched against crypto companies, one of which included a case against Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the bankrupt exchange FTX.
Hartman explained: “In terms of the number of cryptocurrency cases in the future, we will not have as many. We see that our regulatory agencies are quite active in this area. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission take the lead, leaving Manhattan with the opportunity to focus on other priorities.”
Biden-nominated Damian Williams, current Southern District of New York prosecutor, will be succeeded by Jay Clayton, nominated by Donald Trump for the position. He served as SEC chairman in the first term of Trump, with lesser aggressiveness toward crypto companies than was the case under Gary Gensler’s chairmanship.
While Trump had labeled cryptocurrencies a fraud, he later made a turn-around pledge during his campaign to make the U.S.A a “global crypto capital” with government reserves held in bitcoin. He also–
In reiteration of the point, he expressed his discontent with the way Gensler set things up when it came to crypto and vowed to replace him with someone who is pro-crypto.
In summation, Gensler called his time at the SEC back to the limit when he urged crypto companies to register with the agency for compliance with securities laws.
