It is no secret that the SEC under the Trump Administration is taking a very different approach to cryptocurrency than the agency did under the Biden Administration. Indeed, a detailed December 2025 New York Times article (here) made it clear – if there were any doubt — that the administration’s more restrained approach to crypto starts at the very top. But what does the more restrained crypto approach mean in practical terms? A January 22, 2026, report from Cornerstone Research, which can be found here, spells out in detail what it means, both in terms of reduced numbers of crypto-related enforcement actions and in diminished crypto-related recoveries.
According to the report, the SEC initiated only 13 crypto-related enforcement actions in 2025, compared to 33 in 2024, representing a 60 % decline. But the decline in SEC crypto enforcement under the Trump administration is even more stark than these numbers alone might suggest. The report goes on to detail that with respect to the SEC’s 13 crypto enforcement actions in 2025, five were initiated under the prior SEC Chair Gary Gensler before his January 2025 departure. In other words, in the 11 remaining months under the Trump administration, the SEC brought only five crypto actions.
A chart on the report’s second page underscores just how dramatic the decline in SEC crypto-related enforcement action was compared to recent prior years. The 13 total actions in 2025 not only represented a decline from the 33 crypto enforcement actions in 2024, but they also represent an even steeper decline from the 47 total crypto enforcement actions filed in 2023 (the year during the period 2013-2025 with the highest annual number of crypto enforcement actions). The 13 total crypto enforcement actions in 2025 is also the lowest number of crypto enforcement actions since 2018, when there were 18.
The same chart also reflects additional interesting information about the number of SEC attorneys leading crypto-currency related investigations. According to the chart, there were as many as 101 SEC attorneys leading crypto investigations in 2023 (the highest annual number during the period 2013-2025), but the number had dropped to 33 in 2025, the lowest number since 2017.
The falloff in SEC recoveries in crypto-related enforcement actions is even more dramatic than the drop of the number of crypto enforcement actions. According to the report, the total monetary penalties imposed in 2025 against digital-market participants totaled only $142 million, representing only three percent of the approximately $4.7 billion in monetary penalties the SEC recovered in crypto-related cases in 2024.
The decline in recoveries under the current administrations appears even more dramatic if the 2025 recoveries are broken down between the recoveries in January under Gensler and the recoveries in the remaining 11months of the year under the Trump administration. The report shows that of the total of $142 million in crypto-related recoveries in 2025, more than half ($71.9 million) was recovered in January, under Gensler, compared to $70.1 million under the Trump administration. The median penalties recovered in January under Gensler was $1.65 million, compared to only $85,000 under the Trump administration during the remaining 11 months of the year.
While the SEC under its current chair Paul Atkins, is clearly taking a different approach to crypto than under the prior administration, the agency’s approach, at least by Atkins’s own account, is not merely passive. Thus, in a speech in November 2025, Atkins detailed what he has described as “Project Crypto,” which, in his telling, is a more purposeful regulatory approach rather than an ad hoc enforcement-based approach, as he characterizes the prior administration’s approach.
The “Project Crypto” approach is based on the view that many digital tokens and other digital assets are not “securities” within the meaning of the relevant securities laws. Atkins has also expressed an intent for the agency to try to create so-called “innovation exemptions” and safe harbors, to allow space for innovative crypto asset development. Atkins did emphasize that “fraud remains fraud” and that the agency will continue to aggressively challenge manipulative or deceptive practices.