Regulatory uncertainty still looms over crypto markets, but fraud, manipulation and trading on nonpublic information will remain enforcement priorities, McGuireWoods Washington, D.C., partner David Hirsch, Charlotte partner Garen Marshall and Washington, D.C., associate Rhea Shahane wrote in the February 2025 issue of The International Journal of Blockchain Law.
The attorneys wrote that the Trump administration has signaled that it will take a different, friendlier approach to the regulation of crypto markets. Nevertheless, writing and enacting new laws and federal regulations to implement changes will take months or years.
This dynamic of accelerating adoption with only limited clear rules and guidance creates challenges for entities that want to prepare for the changes ahead, the attorneys wrote. But there are opportunities for financial institutions to efficiently focus their planning on known compliance issues that are unlikely to change, such as managing risks and enhancing compliance policies related to manipulative and insider trading.
“Federal investigations focused on manipulative conduct and trading based on material non-public information will continue, and may even increase, as resources previously tasked with investigating registration issues become available to address other conduct,” the authors wrote.
Hirsch is former chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit in the Division of Enforcement. Marshall is a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he most recently was a member of the office’s National Security and Cybercrime Unit.