As the superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, Adrienne Harris carved out a name for herself as a forward-thinking regulator who created a national presence for her small supervisory agency during an era of bank collapses and crypto meltdowns. Now, she is moving on.
On Monday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Harris’s departure, effective in October, ending a four-year tenure for the former Obama administration official. In a press release, Hochul touted Harris’s role in “rebuilding the Department into a regulator fit for the financial capital of the world.”
The U.S. financial landscape has changed dramatically since Hochul nominated Harris to lead the DFS in August 2021. Following her appointment, a series of bankruptcies in the blockchain industry led to billions of dollars in losses for investors, and the failure of banks Silvergate and Signature threatened the broader U.S. financial system.
Though Harris would join Biden administration agencies, including Gary Gensler’s Securities and Exchange Commission, in handing down enforcement actions against leading companies such as Coinbase and Genesis, she also advanced regulation around technology such as stablecoin issuance on blockchains like Ethereum and Solana—a stark difference from her federal counterparts, who became notorious in the crypto world for “regulation by enforcement.” Harris also extended her department’s issuance of the BitLicense program, at the time the only crypto regulatory system in the country.
