Crypto Groups Push Ads, Letters to Oppose Democrat's SEC Commissioner Nomination

The Cedar Innovation Foundation and other crypto organizations are lobbying against the re-nomination of Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw.

Dec 9, 2024, 7:54 p.m. UTC

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission member Caroline Crenshaw is "even more extreme" than Chair Gary Gensler, according to a digital advertising campaign now being launched by Cedar Innovation Foundation — a dark-money group funded by unnamed crypto interests.

Commissioner Crenshaw, who is set to be the lone Democrat atop the SEC when Republicans take over the agency and wider administration in late January, was nominated for another term earlier this year, but the confirmation hadn't come up for a vote before the November election. Now, the Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday to consider that nomination.

Several digital assets organizations have deployed in an effort to block her approval. Cedar Innovation Foundation underlined in a statement that Crenshaw had opposed the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and has criticized crypto markets as "a 'petri dish' of fraud." The Blockchain Association and other lobbying groups have sent letters to the Senate lawmakers urging a rejection of the commissioner, whose current five-year term has expired, leaving her serving in a buffer period that could last until the end of 2025.

The Senate's banking panel is led by Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was targeted by about $40 million in crypto-industry campaign spending and lost his seat to a blockchain businessman, Bernie Moreno. But Brown still has the gavel until the Senate changes hands next year. 

The Blockchain Association sent a letter to Brown and the panel's ranking Republican, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and argued that "her actions have undermined Congress's clear mandate to establish sound regulatory policies for crypto." The DeFi Education Fund similarly contended that Crenshaw's actions are "at odds with this charge."

And Ji Kim, the chief legal and policy council for the Crypto Council for Innovation, posted on X, "Commissioner Crenshaw has unfortunately not demonstrated the objective judgment required of agency leaders."

Scott, for his part, asked President Joe Biden to withdraw his outstanding nominations after the election, reiterating this request last Friday.

Read More: Another SEC Democrat to Drop Out, Leaving Republicans Running Agency by February

Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.

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