Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Mark Uyeda said the agency dismissed many of its cases against crypto companies in early 2025 to protect its credibility in court, arguing that pressing forward with litigation while preparing a fundamental shift in policy would have forced the SEC's own lawyers to argue against positions the commission was about to adopt.

Uyeda made the remarks on Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy's Financial Markets Quality Conference, as reported by Blockonomi. He served as acting chair of the SEC from January to April 2025, leading the agency in the interim period before Paul Atkins was confirmed as chair.

Why the SEC Dropped the Crypto Cases

According to Uyeda, the commission was at the time preparing what he described as a “180-degree change” in how it made rules for the crypto industry. Because the civil cases had been filed under the previous administration, he said, continuing to pursue them could have hurt the agency: SEC lawyers would have found themselves arguing positions in court that conflicted directly with the commission's planned new policies.

“I'm not about to have our litigators, even though they're having cases that were authorized under the prior administration, stand up in court and have a commission interpretation be issued that is a 180-degree change from what they'd been arguing for that court,” Uyeda said.

“I think that hurts [our] credibility as an agency,” he added.

He also said there had been serious concerns about whether the cases against crypto companies were justified under the law. His account highlights the tension of the transition period: the cases rested on the prior leadership's legal theory, while the incoming commission was preparing to regulate the industry on fundamentally different terms.

Cases Against Kraken, Ripple and Coinbase

During his tenure as acting chair, the SEC dropped cases against several major crypto firms, including Kraken, Ripple Labs and Coinbase, among others. The withdrawals marked a sharp reversal from the enforcement-first posture that had defined the agency's approach under prior leadership, lifting major legal overhangs from some of the most prominent companies in the US crypto market.

Critics said the decisions looked like payback for the crypto industry's support of President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

Many of the underlying cases had been filed while Gary Gensler led the SEC. Trump had promised to fire Gensler “on day one” if he won the election, and Gensler resigned on the day Trump took office in January 2025.

A Commission Running Short on Members

Uyeda has served as an SEC commissioner since 2022 and now sits the agency's leadership panel alongside Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce.

The commission is designed to have five members, but only three of those seats are currently filled. Peirce is expected to leave the agency in November. Peirce, nicknamed “Crypto Mom” for her long-standing push for clearer digital-asset rules and currently at the helm of the SEC's Crypto Task Force, has been central to the agency's crypto policy work, making her departure a significant development for an industry closely tracking the agency's policy shift. After her departure, the SEC will be left with just two of its five members, and Trump has so far not announced any nominations to fill the open seats. Who fills those seats, and when, will have a direct say in how the SEC's approach to crypto regulation evolves from here, making the nomination process one of the key developments to watch as the agency's reset unfolds.