Mark Uyeda has been named acting chairman of the SEC.
The Republican commissioner replaces outgoing chair Gary Gensler, and is expected to be in place before Donald Trump’s nomination Paul Atkins is confirmed by the Senate.
Uyeda has been a commissioner at the SEC since June 2022, and worked with senior leadership at the US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Labour during Trump’s first term.
Earlier in his career Uyeda was chief advisor to the Californian securities regulator, the Corporations Commissioner, and spent a number of years as a corporate and securities attorney in Washington DC and Los Angeles.
Trump has advocated for a more pro-crypto environment in the US, already launching his own memecoin and calling for the creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve. Uyeda’s first move after his appointment was to launch a crypto task force, establishing a regulatory framework for crypto assets and setting the stage. To date, the commission said, a reactive and retroactive approach to regulation has been taken in this space.
“The result has been confusion about what is legal, which creates an environment hostile to innovation and conducive to fraud. The SEC can do better,” it said.
The task force will be led by commissioner Hester Peirce.
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