The New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris leaves the regulator next month, she announced on Monday.
Harris, a former White House specialist under former President Barack Obama, departs Nydfs on October 17, 2025, Governor Kathy Hochul in New York said in a statement. Nydf’s Executive Vice President Superintendent of Research and Innovation Kaitlin Asrow takes over as acting leader of the agency. Nydfs was the first state regulator to issued specific rules for cryptic companies with its landmark Bitlicense, which came into force 10 years ago.
In statements, Hochul and Harris thanked each other, where Hochul said that Harris worked “every day to make our financial system work for New Yorkers, while also rebuilt the department of a regulator that fits the world’s financial capital.”
Harris only joined as the functioning superintendent in August 2021, after Hochul nominated her to the role and was confirmed by New York’s state senate the following January.
“It feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago, all at the same time,” Harris said of his four -year period earlier Monday during a performance at Digital Asset Compliance & Market Integrity Summit, the host of Solidus Labs.
During that time, she said, Nydfs had issued 11 different pieces of regulatory guidance to strengthen the regulator’s landmark Bitlicense.
“The industry had already changed so much from 2015 to 2021 when I came in, it felt really important that we start adding meat to the bones of regulation,” she said.
This included guidance for handling stableecoins, blockchain analysis and coin lists, among other information, she said.
“I think it’s a real testimony to what we’ve done by DFS that people in both congress chambers, people on both sides of a time, come to us for our technical expertise, for advice, for edits, many of which have been incorporated – not all – but in the current market structure bill,” she said.
Nydfs also carried out investigations and enforcement measures, including in Binance Dollar StableCoin (BUSD) issued by stableecoin company Paxos after a study dating back to 2023.
