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Federal officials declared that so-called memecoins would not be subject to strict oversight.
A series of investigations into major cryptocurrency firms were halted.
And the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pause a fraud case against a top crypto entrepreneur.
Just over a month since President Trump’s inauguration, U.S. regulators have almost entirely dismantled a yearslong government crackdown on the crypto industry, a volatile sector rife with fraud, scams and theft.
Regulators are following through on campaign promises that Mr. Trump made last year, as he courted donations from deep-pocketed crypto investors and marketed his own digital currency to the public.
But few in the crypto industry expected to notch so many victories so quickly.
Last week, the S.E.C. agreed to drop its lawsuit against Coinbase, the largest crypto company in the United States. Then, in rapid succession, top executives at the crypto firms Gemini, OpenSea and Uniswap Labs announced that the agency had halted its investigations into their companies. An executive at another major crypto firm, Consensys, said on Thursday that the S.E.C. had agreed to withdraw a lawsuit targeting one of the company’s popular products.
“This marks another milestone to the end of the war on crypto,” Cameron Winklevoss, a Gemini founder, wrote on X on Wednesday. “I’m glad to be turning the page here.”
The rapid-fire legal moves amounted to an astonishing reversal by regulators who usually move with caution, reluctant to abandon ongoing litigation. Case by case, the S.E.C. is backing away from an ambitious legal campaign, led by the Biden administration, to classify nearly all digital coins as securities — and subject them to the same strict rules that govern stocks and bonds traded on Wall Street.
The reversal “shreds the S.E.C.’s credibility, integrity and reputation, and sends the message that it’s a political organization that acts based on the most recent election,” said Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that pushes for strong regulation.
Some of the agency’s actions are poised to directly benefit Mr. Trump or his business partners, creating conflicts of interest with little precedent in American history, according to government ethics experts.
That was evident on Thursday when the S.E.C. said it would not exercise any regulatory authority over memecoins, a risky type of cryptocurrency linked to a celebrity or an online joke. Days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump had created his own memecoin, $Trump, which generated tens of millions of dollars for his family and its partners.
This week, the S.E.C. also asked a federal judge to pause a major fraud case against the crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who invested tens of millions of dollars in another of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, World Liberty Financial. The judge authorized the request.
A representative for Mr. Sun declined to comment. Mark Uyeda, the S.E.C.’s acting chairman, said in a statement on Thursday that the agency needed to “rectify its approach and develop crypto policy in a more transparent manner.”
Under the Biden administration, the S.E.C.’s enforcement campaign was led by its chair, Gary Gensler, who became an enemy of the crypto industry. Mr. Gensler filed lawsuits against a slew of top companies, including the crypto exchanges Coinbase, Binance and Kraken.
Mr. Trump vowed to end that crackdown. To replace Mr. Gensler at the S.E.C., he nominated Paul Atkins, a securities lawyer with close ties to the crypto industry. He also tapped David Sacks, a venture investor and crypto enthusiast, to serve as “White House A.I. and Crypto Czar.”
In his first week in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that laid the groundwork for an overhaul to federal crypto regulation. Then the S.E.C. started acting.
Last week, the agency agreed to drop its lawsuit against Coinbase — a case arguing that the exchange was marketing unregistered securities — without imposing any financial penalty, in a total victory for the company.
In its lawsuit against Binance, the S.E.C. requested a 60-day pause, citing efforts to “facilitate the potential resolution of this case.” The agency took even more definitive steps in several other cases, ending investigations into high-profile companies including Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Arguably the agency’s most significant action this week concerned Mr. Sun.
The founder of a crypto platform called Tron, Mr. Sun, who was born in China, is among the most colorful figures in the crypto world. Last year, he spent $6.2 million on an experimental piece of artwork — a banana taped to a wall. He proceeded to eat the banana.
In 2023, the S.E.C. filed a lawsuit against Mr. Sun, accusing him of fraudulently manipulating the price of his cryptocurrency. “Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors,” an agency official said at the time. Mr. Sun denied the allegations.
Mr. Sun has become close to Mr. Trump’s inner circle. He spent $30 million last year to buy a cryptocurrency released by World Liberty Financial, which Mr. Trump and his sons have heavily promoted.
Now Mr. Sun appears close to resolving his legal problems in the United States. In a court filing on Wednesday, the S.E.C. requested a pause in the case as both sides “consider a potential resolution.”
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