For most of the administration of Donald Trump and up until Dec. 23, Jay Clayton led the SEC. Just months into Clayton’s term, the commission put out its report on The DAO in response to the infamous meltdown of the decentralized autonomous collective that resulted in the Ethereum–Ethereum Classic hard fork. The report on The DAO was the SEC’s warning shot that it would consider certain crypto offerings as securities, thus rendering the issuers liable if they failed to register as such. It put the SEC as a whole, and Clayton in particular, at the front lines of crypto regulation, whereas before, the commission had only gone after operators in crypto for actual fraud. In 2020, the SEC stepped its game up and went after some of the biggest initial coin offerings in history, including Telegram, Tezos and, just in time for Christmas, XRP. 

Aside from its major activity in prosecuting ICO issuers, the SEC spent the latter months of 2020 laying the groundwork for some well-needed crypto clarity. Its Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, or FinHub, got an upgrade, security token broker-dealers saw five-year protection against enforcement action and the commission gave the go-ahead to VCoin — only the third blockchain-backed token to receive a no-action letter from the commission. And all of this happened just as Clayton was on his way out the door. 

For most of the administration of Donald Trump and up until Dec. 23, Jay Clayton led the SEC. Just months into Clayton’s term, the commission put out its report on The DAO in response to the infamous meltdown of the decentralized autonomous collective that resulted in the Ethereum–Ethereum Classic hard fork. The report on The DAO was the SEC’s warning shot that it would consider certain crypto offerings as securities, thus rendering the issuers liable if they failed to register as such. It put the SEC as a whole, and Clayton in particular, at the front lines of crypto regulation, whereas before, the commission had only gone after operators in crypto for actual fraud. In 2020, the SEC stepped its game up and went after some of the biggest initial coin offerings in history, including Telegram, Tezos and, just in time for Christmas, XRP. 

Aside from its major activity in prosecuting ICO issuers, the SEC spent the latter months of 2020 laying the groundwork for some well-needed crypto clarity. Its Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, or FinHub, got an upgrade, security token broker-dealers saw five-year protection against enforcement action and the commission gave the go-ahead to VCoin — only the third blockchain-backed token to receive a no-action letter from the commission. And all of this happened just as Clayton was on his way out the door.