United States Securities and Trade Commissioner Allison Herren Lee introduced that she could be stepping down from her publish on the finish of her time period in June.
In a Tuesday announcement, Lee stated that she is going to remain within the function till her successor has been confirmed. The SEC commissioner has spent lower than three years at her present place, having been sworn in in 2019 to serve out the rest of a five-year time period expiring in June.
Along with her departure, Lee, a Democrat who changed former commissioner Kara Stein, will create a second emptiness on the SEC, with one other left open by Republican Elad Roisman, who introduced he could be leaving in January. Commissioner Hester Peirce, identified to many within the house because the “Crypto Mother,” is presently the only Republican on the five-member fee. By regulation, not more than three members of the fee can belong to the identical celebration.
Lee labored on the SEC for over a decade earlier than her appointment, serving as her predecessor‘s counsel and as senior counsel of the complicated monetary devices unit earlier than changing into a commissioner. She was the SEC‘s performing chair from January to April 2021, after which period Gary Gensler was confirmed because the regulatory physique‘s head.
Adjustments within the composition of the SEC might have a direct affect on the cryptocurrency trade. The fee below Gensler has been notably lively in its enforcement actions throughout the trade. Lee debated Peirce final 12 months at a convention at Georgetown College, the place she argued for sustaining the appliance of present requirements to cryptocurrency:
“I feel we’ve to evolve with altering applied sciences, however I don‘t assume which means we modify our ideas or stray from our mission, which I feel has labored effectively for many years.”
Lee additionally stated in an tackle to the Training Regulation Institute earlier this month that “we’ve seen a wholly new multi-trillion greenback trade develop round cryptocurrency and digital belongings that largely defies present legal guidelines and laws.”
Lee was famous for her local weather advocacy, having joined the SEC from the power trade. In keeping with the New York Occasions, Lee will take up a visiting professorship in Italy after she leaves the SEC.
