US SEC Unveils Panelists for Next Week’s Crypto Custody Roundtable
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced the agenda and panelists for its next crypto roundtable. The roundtable will be held on 25 April and will last for four hours. According to the announcement, the event will have two parts: ‘Custody Through Broker-Dealers and Beyond’ and ‘Investment Adviser and Investment Company Custody.’ Zach Zweihorn, a partner at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, will moderate.
The event will begin with opening remarks from Richard Gabbert, the Crypto Task Force’s Chief of Staff, SEC Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and Commissioner Hester Peirce.
The panelists for the day’s first session will include Jason Allegrante, the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks; Rachel Anderika, the Global Head of Operations at Anchorage Digital Bank; and Terrence Dempsey, the Head of Product at Fidelity Digital Asset Services. Furthermore, the session will see Mark Greenberg, the head of global Asset Growth and Management division at Kraken; Veronica McGregor, Chief Legal Officer at Exodus Movement; Brandon Russell, founder and CEO of Etana Custody; and Tammy Weinrib, chief compliance officer and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) officer at Copper Technologies.
Following the break, the panelists will include Larry Florio, general counsel at 1kx, and Ryan Louvar, General Counsel at WisdomTree Asset Management. Other representatives hail from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Schulte Roth & Zabel, Distributed Global, Shearman Sterling, Georgetown University Law Center, Dechert, and University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
“It is important for the SEC to grapple with custody issues, which are some of the most challenging as we seek to integrate crypto assets into our regulatory structure,” says Commissioner Hester Peirce, leader of the Crypto Task Force. “We look forward to hearing from experts on these important issues.”
SEC Will Hold More Crypto Roundtables
Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda created the Crypto Task Force in January 2025. Its task is to create a clear and comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto assets. In late March, the SEC formed a new Presidential Task Force on Cryptocurrency as part of its SEC Crypto 2.0 initiative. They said the task force will focus on ensuring that both on-chain and off-chain crypto transactions comply with the same trade reporting standards as traditional securities.
Subsequently, the task force launched the sessions with crypto industry insiders as part of the SEC’s ‘Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity’ initiative. Following the first one in March, the SEC held the second roundtable on cryptocurrency trading regulation in April. It featured Uniswap Labs CLO Katherine Minarik, Associate General Counsel for Cumberland DRW Chelsea Pizzola, and Coinbase Institutional Product VP Greg Tusar, as well as representatives from traditional finance and academia. At the time, Uyeda suggested putting forward temporary regulations to provide clarity for the digital asset sector.
Additionally, in late March, the Crypto Task Force said it would host four additional public roundtables this spring. The SEC will host them at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Also, the events are open to the public and livestreamed on the agency’s website.
Meanwhile, the roundtables follow the SEC’s shift in its approach to digital asset oversight. As reported, the SEC announced new guidelines on 4 April. It said that certain fiat-backed stablecoins would be classified as “non-securities,” exempting them from transaction reporting requirements. Additionally, the federal regulator has dismissed a number of lawsuits against major players in the crypto space. These include Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Consensys, Robinhood, Yuga Labs, and most recently CyberKongz, among others.