Commissioner Mark Uyeda will take over leadership of the US Securities and Exchange Commission while the agency awaits Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick for the permanent role, Paul Atkins.

Acting Chairman Uyeda, who has been a vocal supporter of relaxing the regulator’s pursuit of the crypto industry along with Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce, once served Atkins as an adviser at the agency. Atkins, who was formally nominated hours after Trump was sworn in on Monday, is a former commissioner who has developed ties to crypto in his Washington consulting business.

Uyeda has expressed his own strong views about the SEC’s role with respect to digital assets. He has routinely criticized the commission’s majority for moves to rein in crypto, such as the so-called Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121), which made it difficult for banks to maintain clients with digital assets. He has said he prefers to get rid of it — a move that is now within his authority.

The replacement of chairs has not yet been officially announced at the agency, although the remaining commissioners – including Hester Peirce and Caroline Crenshaw – issued a joint statement about former chairman Gary Gensler’s exit.

“Although as commissioners we approached policy issues from different perspectives, there was always dignity in our differences,” the commissioners said. “Chairman Gensler has engaged in bipartisan engagement and a respectful exchange of ideas, which has helped facilitate our service to the American public.”

Gensler had previously announced that he would step down at noon on January 20 – at the same time as Trump was sworn in.

Gensler had become the main government antagonist of the crypto industry in recent years. He pursued enforcement cases, pushed controversial crypto accounting policy, championed tough regulatory proposals that threatened the industry’s business model, and blocked — for a time — the establishment of spot-crypto exchange traded funds (ETFs). On the latter point, a court ruling against the agency forced Gensler’s hand, and he eventually voted with commission Republicans to clear the way for ETFs.

His agency argued in court that existing legislation was sufficient to categorize and regulate crypto assets. That position was favored by some federal judges and opposed by others, and the central issues are still working their way through the courts.

Uyeda’s SEC, however long his tenure, is absent virtually all senior legal officials who worked under Gensler, including in the enforcement division and the attorney general’s office.

The acting president has the full authority of the office, but people in that position sometimes choose to defer to the incoming president and wait for major decisions.

At the SEC’s sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Republican Commissioner Caroline Pham has been elevated to the role of acting chairman there, although Trump has yet to name a permanent successor to outgoing Democrat chairman Rostin Behnam.

Unlike the CFTC, which currently has a 2-2 partisan split, the SEC’s Republicans outnumber the lone Democrat by 2-1.