Roisman was sworn into the SEC in 2018 and served as acting chair until
January 2021, with his term as commissioner originally set to expire in
2023.
Elad Roisman, one of five members of the Securities and Exchange
Commission’s board, has announced his intention to resign from the
government agency.
In a Monday announcement, Roisman said
he had sent a letter to President Joe Biden informing him of his
decision to leave the SEC by the end of January 2022. The SEC
commissioner said he would continue working with his colleagues “to
further our mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly
and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation” until his
departure.
Roisman was sworn into office in September 2018 under the previous administration and served as acting SEC chair
from December 2020 to January 2021, when he was replaced by
commissioner Allison Herren Lee. His term was originally set to expire
in 2023. Gary Gensler has served as the agency’s chairperson following
his confirmation in the Senate in April 2021.
During his time at the SEC, Roisman was considered by many to be an
ally of the crypto industry for seemingly favorable positions in
regulating digital assets. During his time as chief counsel of the U.S.
Senate Banking Committee, Roisman said
the SEC should “examine and re-examine its rules, regulations and
guidelines” when it came to emerging technologies including crypto and
blockchain.
More recently, Roisman co-signed a letter
with SEC commissioner Hester Peirce, known by many as Crypto Mom,
criticizing Gensler for not providing clarification on crypto in the
agency’s regulatory agenda. The pair claimed that the SEC being unable
to formulate investor rules in the digital asset space “emboldens
fraudsters and hinders conscientious participants who want to comply
with the law.”
Any
change to the SEC leadership could potentially impact regulation and
enforcement of the crypto space. Currently, the SEC, Commodity and
Futures Trading Commission, and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
handle digital asset regulation in the United States, but each with
different jurisdictional claims, resulting in a patchwork approach that crypto firms must navigate to legally operate.
