On March 3, a busy day for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) saw it announce the members of its new Crypto Task Force, who will immediately get to work by hosting a series of roundtables to discuss key areas of interest in regulating digital assets.
The task force was launched back in January by Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda to help the Commission “draw clear regulatory lines, provide realistic paths to registration, craft sensible disclosure frameworks, and deploy enforcement resources judiciously.”
It is made up of staff from Uyeda’s office and other divisions across the Commission. Notable amongst the 14 staff members named was Mike Selig, who will hold the position of ‘chief counsel’ of the task force and was previously a New York-based partner at international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where he was a member of the firm’s digital asset practice.
An archived version of Selig’s profile from the firm’s website—which was since deleted—noted that he had experience counselling digital asset network companies, stablecoin operators, and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces on regulatory issues.
According to his former firm profile, Selig’s areas of expertise include “crypto networks, protocols and instruments, offering and sale of fungible and non-fungible crypto assets and stablecoins, tokenization, formation of decentralized autonomous organizations.”
It added that he “represented clients in enforcement matters before the SEC and CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] involving regulatory compliance violations.”
Selig’s appointment was welcomed by former CFTC Chairman and current Wilkie Farr attorney Chris Giancarlo—whose book on his time as the 13th Chairman of the CFTC is titled “CryptoDad”—in a March 4 post on X.
“Proud and excited for my protégé, former CFTC intern and Willkie partner Mike Selig to be named chief counsel to the new SEC Crypto Task Force,” wrote Giancarlo, who is a senior counsel at Wilkie Farr and leads the firm’s Digital Works practice.
Joining Selig on the SEC Crypto Task Force is a mix of seasoned SEC staff and digital asset industry insiders, including Landon Zinda, former policy director at digital asset think tank Coin Center, and Veronica Reynolds, former attorney at Baker Hostetler LLP focused on NFTs and metaverse-related legal issues; both will serve as ‘senior advisors’ to the task force.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who heads the task force, said of the staffing announcement: “The Crypto Task Force exhibits deep expertise and an enthusiastic commitment to identifying—with the help of other talented staff across the Commission and interested members of the public—workable solutions to difficult crypto regulatory problems.”
First on the agenda
The Crypto Task Force will seemingly waste no time getting down to business, as the staff announcement was swiftly followed—the same day—by the news that it would be hosting a series of roundtables to “discuss key areas of interest in the regulation of crypto assets.”
The aptly named “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity” series will begin on March 21 with the task force’s inaugural roundtable, titled “How We Got Here and How We Get Out – Defining Security Status.”
The session will be open to the public and livestreamed on the SEC website, with a recording to be posted at a later date.
“I am looking forward to drawing on the expertise of the public in developing a workable regulatory framework for crypto,” said Commissioner Peirce. “The roundtables are an important part of our engagement with the public.”
In addition to the March 21 roundtable, the SEC noted that all attendees could participate in small group breakout sessions, which will not be broadcast.
Further information regarding the agenda and roundtable speakers will be posted on the Crypto Task Force webpage in the coming days.
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