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Brad Garlinghouse is CEO of Ripple, which won a partial victory against the SEC in federal district court. The SEC was appealing the decision before deciding to drop the case.Five local cryptocurrency companies have seen federal investigations or cases against them go away or be put on hold amid President Donald Trump’s broader retreat from investigating alleged corporate misconduct.
When he took office in January, Trump inherited from former President Joe Biden’s administration at least 21 cryptocurrency-related investigations or cases, most of them led by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to data from Public Citizen, a public-advocacy group. The Trump administration has since moved to dismiss or pause at least 18 of those, including the cases involving the local companies — Ripple, Kraken, Coinbase, Robinhood and the Tron Foundation. The SEC, which spearheaded all the enforcement actions against the local cryptocurrency businesses, has couched its moves to back away from such cases as an attempt to revamp the way it regulates the sector. On Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s second inauguration, the agency’s acting chairmanThe previous approach of using enforcement to police the sector left companies confused about what was legal and engendered “an environment hostile to innovation and conducive to fraud,” the agency said in a press statement. “The SEC can do better.” The local companies have all praised or applauded the pause or end of the actions against them. Coinbase was particularly emphatic in its reaction, saying the SEC’s decision in February “We’ve always maintained that we were right on the facts and the law, and today’s announcement confirms that this case should never have been filed in the first place,” the company said in a press release. “This is a victory not just for Coinbase, but for our customers, the United States, and individual freedom.” But consumer advocates and some who closely follow the industry say the moves by the SEC and the Trump administration more broadly to shut down enforcement actions in the sector should be viewed with skepticism. The regulatory retreat comes after industry companies and executives donated hundreds of millions to back pro-crypto politicians — including Trump — in last year’s election. And it comes as the president and his family have profited off and invested in crypto-related projects, including“This is so conflict-infected, it’s hard to get beyond that,” said Jack Graves, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law who focuses on the cryptocurrency industry.SEC officials and representatives of the Tron Foundation did not respond to requests for comment. A Kraken representative declined to respond to a request for comment about the ties critics such as Graves and Public Citizen have made to the dismissal of the cases and political contributions to Trump. Coinbase and Robinhood representatives declined to comment on the record about that allegation. “This investigation never should have been opened,” Dan Gallagher, Robinhood’s chief legal, compliance and corporate affairs officer said in an emailed statement. “Robinhood Crypto always has and will always respect federal securities laws ... As we explained to the SEC, any case against Robinhood Crypto would have failed.” The agency lost a portion of its case against Ripple at the district-court level. After appealing, it was on track to lose again before Trump’s SEC agreed to drop the case, said Stu Alderoty, Ripple’s chief legal officer, in an emailed statement. “The real question isn’t why the appeal was dropped: it’s why was the case brought in the first place?” Alderoty said. Meanwhile, by pausing or dismissing the cryptocurrency cases — many of them in exchange for nothing at all from the companies themselves — the SEC is ending an effort to apply longstanding and well-understood regulations to the sector, critics say. The result is to return the industry to the regulatory vacuum that Gary Gensler, who chaired the agency under Biden, tried to address, they say.“We’re back to Gensler’s Wild West, for better or worse,” Graves said. “I’m not a fan of that ... You look historically at this industry, it’d be hard to find one where there was more fraud.”. During Trump’s first term, the SEC took numerous enforcement actions against individual cryptocurrency projects. But that came to beWhen Gensler took over as the agency’s chair, he refocused the SEC on cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase. Since most people bought and sold virtual currencies through such exchanges, Gensler saw them as a key way to regulate the industry, The Journal reported. Under him, the SEC viewed most cryptocurrencies and tokens as securities — essentially the same as stocks, bonds and other such assets that people invested in expecting a return. As such, the agency and its chair argued, investors deserved the same kinds of disclosures they would get from companies who sold their shares on public markets. They also argued cryptocurrency exchanges should be required to register with the agency and be held to similar rules as stock exchanges, such as a bar on executing trades on behalf of investors at the same time they operate a marketplace for the buying and selling of stocks — or in this case, virtual currencies.stepped up its cryptocurrency enforcement campaign , filing lawsuits against two of the largest remaining exchanges, Coinbase and Binance. The agency also launched investigations into numerous others, Many in the crypto industry reacted with shock and outrage to the enforcement actions. But given that Gensler had been telegraphing the move for years, that reaction seemed a little disingenuous, said Molly White, who follows the crypto industry closely as the author of the “Citation Needed” newsletter and the “Web3 is Going Just Great” blog. “The communication was fairly clear out of the SEC, but because the crypto industry didn’t agree with it and then didn’t like it, they basically claimed it was unclear or impossible to comply with, or pick your argument,” White said. There was some legitimate uncertainty about the application of existing securities laws to the cryptocurrency industry.than something that represented a stake in a particular project or company. However, for Gensler, at least, it was reportedly an open question for a while Additionally, a court ruling in 2023 in the case the SEC brought against Ripple brought more nuance to the question. In that case, which was originally brought under the first Trump administration, the judge ruled that sales Ripple and its executives made of its XRP token directly to institutional investors But the judge also ruled that anonymous sales of XRP Ripple made to the broader public didn’t qualify as securities, because those buyers didn’t know who the seller was and thus couldn’t have reasonably expected the seller to work toward increasing the value of XRP.Critics of the enforcement effort argue it didn’t do a good job of protecting consumers or combating fraud and could be counterproductive. A study by Rutgers law professor Yuliya Guseva indicated that enforcement actions taken by the SEC encouraged cryptocurrency issuers to comply with the agency’s rules by using less regulated and “Enforcement is generally not an ideal way to regulate dynamic and innovative markets,” said Guseva, who is also the director of Rutgers Law School’s Blockchain and Fintech Program.agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against Kraken,, it agreed to reduce the fine against the company to $50 million from $125 million. And it has asked a court to put on hold its case against Whatever the arguments against those cases, the moves come after Trump benefited from each of those companies. Coinbase and KrakenSuch transactions put the SEC’s regulatory retreat in crypto in a dim light, consumer advocates and industry critics say.twolverton@sfexaminer.comMayor Daniel Lurie, seen campaigning last year at the Clement Street Farmers Market: “We’re going to be a city that is considered the greatest city in the world again.”The conference table in this room of the mayor’s office is huge. Like, weirdly huge. The Examiner noticed it. Mayor Daniel Lurie noted it. The mayor’s office itself is still a work in progress. So is the city in which it sits. Nearing 100 days in office, Lurie too is still settling into his role as San Francisco’s chief executive. It’s a job few would’ve guessed he would be in. An heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the founder of antipoverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community, Lurie had not served a day in elected office, nor in government, prior to announcing his The Examiner sat down with Lurie last week as he approached 100 days in office to reflect on his ability to implement that change thus far, the unexpected challenges that have cropped up and his strategy to ameliorate San Francisco’sI’ll start with an open-ended question. What would you say is The City’s, and your administration’s, biggest challenge? Has anything popped up that has taken your attention, or you feel like needs more work than maybe you expected coming into office? I’d say it’s this notion that we are a 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday city entity. I think we have to develop the muscle that we are a city that is 365 days, seven days a week. You know, what we have proven as a city is we can pull off big events and we can do it really well, and I can go through the list but you’ve heard me — NBA All-Star Game and— but we have to do that for the people of the city and county of San Francisco every day, and I think that’s the muscle that we gotta build out. I think coming off of COVID where everybody was at home, I think we have to get back to delivering city services Saturday, Sunday, 10 p.m. on a Friday night, 10 p.m. on a Sunday night. That’s a culture that we’ve got to build, but people are incredibly hardworking in the city family. This is not a job that you can do sitting in room 200 or going podiums. You have to be out walking the street, and I happen to love that part, so I’ve taken to that quite easily, and I love it. I love meeting people. I love seeing our DPW and Parks and Rec and SFMTA folks and our police and fire and folks out working, because it’s hard. I think they need to see me out there. Mayor Daniel Lurie officiating the Valentine’s Day wedding of Samir Awan and Alicia Cormie at San Francisco City Hall on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. .” You ran a campaign as an obvious outsider, compared to all the other candidates in the race. Do you feel like you’ve been welcomed into that city family since taking office? Well, I think there’s a — there’s two different ... when I say employees and, and then there’s the “behind the scenes” folks.I think I’ve had to gain people’s trust, and I think I will continue to do that. I think I have to gain the trust of people out in Vis Valley and in Bayview and in the Sunset, in the Richmond — like, people don’t know me that well. I think they’re getting to know me and they’re seeing that I am somebody that is going to be relentless on their behalf, that I’m gonna work closely with anybody that wants to help the city and county of San Francisco. I’m gonna walk down the hall to supervisors’ offices and talk to everyone. If we’re gonna disagree, call me, tell me — and they do, supervisors, community members — and then let’s get to work and figure out how we’re gonna work together ...You weren’t who I was going for, but I’m sure happy that you’re in, because you’ve proved yourself.” So I think we’re slowly winning people over. Mayor Daniel Lurie makes a visit to the relocation and grand opening of Bob’s Donuts at 1720 Polk St. in San Francisco on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.And you’re doing that work to win people over locally at a time when so much is tumultuous on the federal and global level. How does your work as mayor intersect with what’s happening in the world outside of San Francisco’s borders? It’s a challenging time — full stop. I know a lot of people are scared, and I understand that, and I feel that, and I think everybody wants to see their mayor doing, in my case, what he can do for them right now. I cannot, you know, deal with global or economic events — thewe all are watching what’s going on on that front. I have to focus on what I can control, and that’s making sure that we’re cleaning the streets.on the beat, how do we get people off the street and into treatment? My focus has to be on San Francisco and the residents here, and if I start losing my focus, I think that’s to the detriment of our residents, and they want me staying focused on San Francisco. Speaking of cleaning the streets, getting more cops on the beat, I’m wondering how you’ve judged your own success, so early in the administration. By what metrics you would judge your own success or not? I’ve heard you say things like you’re going to be results-oriented, look at data — but then I’ve also heard when how we’re going to measure the success of the— you’re like, ‘It comes down to a feeling, do people feel safe?’ You often define success by things that are difficult to measure.There will be metrics, there will be crime stats ... We’ll always keep track of those, and economic indicators, and so people should judge me on those. Those are happening., not when you see open-air drug dealing and people using it openly and you can’t leave your door. And so there is that feeling, and I was just walking in the Mission this morning and the plazas were clear ... but I have been out on those plazas at 8:15, 8:30 in the morning watching kids go to school, and there would be people passed out in the bus shelter. That has changed a little bit. At least it changed this morning. What I want to see is every day someone being able to go to the bus stop and be like, “Oh, there’s not somebody passed out, high on fentanyl.” Now McAllister Street, right now, is awful. There was 25 people there that we — I, with just two others — got everybody up, saying, “You can go here for help, you can go here for help, but you cannot be passed out with your legs out onto the street.” So we have a lot of work to do and my expectations are sky high. There is a sense of momentum that we are feeling.. That’s a big deal to take over one huge corner of Union Square and have a global brand saying “I’m in.” Those are victories and we’ll take those, but we got to keep stacking wins. I’m not so sure that I should judge you on the office vacancy rate downtown. You mentioned things that are outside the scope of your control, global economic forces that have led to the decline of retail, and — you know what I mean.It’s changed, and we’ve got to rethink it for sure. But down in LA I had a friend send me a video of a mall — I’m not sure which mall it was — but it was packed on a Saturday, Sunday, like, there was good vibes there.at the power station You mentioned 16th and Mission. Feel free to push back on me, but I feel like you have come in needing to demonstrate that The City is capable of doing something to address these longstanding social problems that have obviously upset people to see on the street every day, and so you have taken action on 6th and Mission and 16th and Mission, while acknowledging that, long term, the deeper resources that are needed, structurally, to solve those problems are not here yet. We have a huge budget crisis. We have extraordinary challenges the likes of which we’ve never seen before and we’ve been papering over these budget deficits with one-time funding that is no longer coming, so we’re gonna have to do belt-tightening, but I still believe we can deliver core services to the people. We gotta get really clear on what those are, and it’s clean and safe streets, it’s public safety. We have to get people off the streets and into treatment.And I’m saying you’ve chosen to take people off the street, or move people around, before the treatment is widely available. What we’ve chosen is that we’re not going to allow people to deal drugs openly in public any longer without consequences, so we’re working closely with our partners, with the DA’s office and the police department and Department of Public Works, to show residents that we are going to be relentless. On 6th Street, is it a little bit better? Yes, a little bit better., everybody has seen improvement on the streets. It is not where we want to be, but it’s better. It’s a little bit better, and yet we have this billion-dollar-plus budget deficit, which is going to be a challenge. We can do hard things in San Francisco, and we’re gonna have to do that. Nothing is more challenging than overcoming one of our historic busts — and that’s what we’ve just been through, a historic bust — and I’ve said this ... for those San Franciscans that stuck with us, for those small businesses and those big businesses that stuck with us, I am grateful to them, and now it’s time for them to see a city on the rise. People feel that.Mayor Daniel Lurie throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the San Francisco Giants home opener at Oracle Park on Friday.Buster talks about doing the little things. Bobby Evans, he was an assistant GM, he’s back on as a senior advisor — he told me a story of Buster. He was on a phone call at spring training ... some rookie, some minor leaguer walked by and Buster put the phone down and talked to him for a minute. Someone that’s not gonna make the . The little things, changing the culture, that’s what we’re trying to do here, every single day. We do the little things. We go see somebody that’s asleep or passed out on the concrete in our city, and we say, “Hey, are you OK?” Instead of walking past them, I’m trying to do that every single day. we do the little things, the big things will happen, despite all the challenges — because we’re going to have those challenges — but, if we’re all working together, I am tremendously optimistic about San Francisco’s future. We’re not just on the rise, we’re going to be a city that is considered the greatest city in the world again.State Assemblymember Matt Haney’s latest tenant-protection measure seeks to simplify tenants’ monthly rent bills by requiring landlords to roll many fees into the headline figure.Tenant advocates say many San Francisco renters’ monthly housing payments go well beyond the prices listed on their lease agreements. Fees for cleaning, maintenance, pest control — they all add up. “I’ve definitely heard from many of my constituents that their rent bill can feel like a laundry list,” said state Assemblymember Matt Haney, To cut down on the confusion and uncertainty that such fees can cause, Haney is co-sponsoring a measure that would require landlords to include more of those fees into the headline monthly rental figure. The idea is that one all-encompassing number will be easier for renters to make sense of than a cloud of separate, fluctuating fees. San Francisco tenant advocates say in some cases such fees — which they refer to as “junk fees” — have contributed to tenants getting evicted. “San Francisco rent is very high,” Haney said. “Renters shouldn’t have to deal — on top of that — with these unfair, unpredictable fees that lead them to have huge challenges in planning month over month and put them at risk of being taken advantage of.” In addition, the bill would also block landlords from imposing new fees beyond those originally agreed to in the rental agreement. are renter-occupied. Statewide, the share is around 44%. Meanwhile, landlord groups oppose the measure. They argue that by limiting property owners’ ability to charge more for services when usage goes up, the legislation will force them to raise the overall housing costs imposed on all tenants. Renters are “still going to pay,” said Debra Carlton, an executive vice president at the California Apartment Association, a statewide advocacy group. But with these restrictions, “the owner won’t be able to know the price of those fees if they fluctuate, so they’re going to guess high.”“This is not about things that are optional for a tenant,” like parking or having a pet, he said. Rather, the restriction would apply only to those fees which are required of all tenants living in an apartment building. For example, Haney’s measure — which, if passed, would take effect at the start of 2026 — would still allow landlords to charge “legally permitted” late fees, according to a press release from Haney’s office. Landlords could also continue to charge for utilities based on the metered usage of things such as water and electricity for individual apartments. Without the protections laid out under Haney’s measure, many tenants have been faced with bills that often vary dramatically from month-to-month based on factors that are outside their control, said Tuesday Rose Thornton, an attorney for San Francisco’s Eviction Defense Collaborative. The city-funded initiative Thornton pointed to the case of one of her clients who lived in a building in which the landlord split up the expenses for trash disposal evenly among all tenants. In effect, this meant that during periods when fewer people lived in the building, these fees would spike dramatically for the tenants who remained. “So his trash costs were ranging in a given month — I kid you not — between $30 and $130,” Thornton said. Thornton said her client, who lived on a fixed income with the support of federal housing vouchers, fell behind on payments and was ultimately evicted. Tenant-rights advocates allege that landlords have been making greater use of “junk fees” ever since 2020, the year that a statewide rent-stabilization law went into effect in California. The law has imposed an “What we see is just attempts to tack on these fees as a way to charge even higher rent, but still claim to be operating within the letter of the law, if not the spirit of the law,” said Shanti Singh of the advocacy group Tenants Together. Carlton pushed back against that claim, stating that fees have been a part of rental agreements for decades. Calton also argued that rather than regulating rental fees, Haney’s measure should instead focus on boosting transparency for renters by requiring landlords to disclose all fees in lease agreements as well as in advertising. But Singh said such fees represent a gaping loophole that threatens to sink more and more struggling renters during a time when “As much as San Francisco does have a lot of local protections,” she said, “that layer of state protection is still important to us.” Terry Asten Bennett, the co-owner of Cliff’s Variety, said she’s stocking up on store inventory before federal tariffs cause prices increases.Terry Asten Bennett, the co-owner of Cliff’s Variety, said she’s stocking up on store inventory before federal tariffs cause prices increases.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. 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