United States president-elect Donald Trump is mulling his options for a replacement for the Securities and Exchange Commission chair.
The Trump transition team is considering pro-crypto lawyer Teresa Goody Guillén as a potential SEC chair candidate, according to reports. Guillén is currently a partner at BakerHostetler and co-lead of its blockchain team.
Last week, Gary Gensler released a statement that suggested he was leaving the agency, and the debate over his replacement has heated up.
“As Trump searches for a pro-crypto SEC Chair, crypto prices will likely continue to rise,” predicted the Kobeissi Letter.
“She is the best candidate of all the people that are currently being opined on,” Brendan Playford, co-founder of Masa, told CoinDesk.
He added that she has a clear understanding of the laws and the way the SEC works. “We would just have an instant change-maker that would dramatically transform the industry with someone that’s very pro-crypto.”
She would “dramatically roll back the prior administration’s default to regulating through enforcement and arbitrarily reading into statutes written 90 years ago,” Charley Cooper, senior advisor at digital asset solutions provider R3 and a former chief operating officer at the CFTC, told CoinDesk.
Last week, former SEC attorney Guillén said that US crypto and capital markets “will thrive under President Trump” before adding, “The public has loudly and clearly spoken; current govt has a responsibility to serve the will of the people.”
General counsel at 1kx, Larry Florio, said, “I’ve heard Teresa Goody Guillén’s name floated by a few people recently for SEC chair, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with her and her team.”
“She would be an incredible choice for chair. Practical and hard-charging, she’d be my top pick. Believe it or not, I don’t want a free-for-all for crypto. Sensible and holistic regulation that promotes innovation while protecting against fraud is what we need.”
Job Spec and Candidates
The reported criteria for the SEC chair position include a pro-crypto stance, a non-bureaucratic background, a willingness to implement light-touch regulations, and an interest in overhauling the agency.
Other potential candidates include Robinhood chief legal officer Dan Gallagher, former Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks, former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins, and Robert Stebbins, a legal partner at Willkie.
Stebbins is the least popular choice among crypto industry executives. This week, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse warned that choosing Stebbins “would be akin to bringing us back to the start of the regulation by enforcement era.”