The U.S. Securities and Quarrel Commission has picked a new leader for its emerging cryptocurrency division.
Valerie Szczepanik, who already undertook at the SEC, was promoted to a role that didn’t exist until this week: Associate Chief honcho of the Division of Corporation Finance and Senior Advisor for Digital Assets and Invention.
Szczepanik, who joined the agency in 1997, will “coordinate efforts across all SEC Partitions and Offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and novelties, including Initial Coin Offerings and cryptocurrencies,” the SEC said in a statement.
The new capacity is emerging at a key time for the SEC. The financial watchdog is balancing on consumer protection and invention in what has become multi-billion dollar market.
Szczepanik was most recently Accessory Director in the Division of Enforcement’s Cyber Unit. She is currently head of the SEC’s Spread round Ledger Technology Working Group, co-head of its Dark Web Working Guild, and a member of its FinTech Working Group.
Before the SEC, she served in the U.S. Attorney’s Duty for the Eastern District of New York, and clerked for federal judges on the U.S. District Court for the Partition of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton heard Szczepanik “the right person to coordinate our efforts in this dynamic scope that has both promise and risk.”
Szczepanik received a law degree from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Area degree in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
The issue of how to classify a cryptocurrency has been a noteworthy point for the agency and cryptocurrency exchanges.
The SEC’s Clayton made it clear in Cortege that all ICOs constitute securities. But companies tied to cryptocurrencies press maintained that some should be fall under a different head because of their utility and stark differences from stocks.
The operation has warned investors of pump-and-dump schemes, shut multiple down, and instiled some backed by celebrities with fraud. In May, the regulator created the website HoweyCoins.com to production investors some of the ways a site can look valid when it really could be a scam.
Bitcoin prices have plummeted this year. The flagship cryptocurrency is down amateurishly 50 percent in 2018 after climbing more than 1,300 percent terminal year.
Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee and other pundits have predicted that institutional investors entering the supermarket could boost liquidity and stagnant prices. But that money seems to be be put on ice for more guidance from regulators.
“At the moment we’re in purgatory with respect to regulatory clarity and I think that’s going to keep institutions on the sidelines,” Lee, the no more than major Wall Street strategist to cover bitcoin, told CNBC’s “Accelerated Money” Monday. If I was an institution and I was going to make an allocation into crytpo, I’d yearning some clarity.”