New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris will leave the regulator next month, he announced Monday.
Harris, a former White House assistant under former President Barack Obama, will leave NYDFS on October 17, 2025, New York governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement. The NYDFS Executive Deputy Superintendent of Research and Innovation Kaitlin Asrow will take as the acting leader of the agency. The NYDFS was the first state regulator to issue specific policies for crypto companies with its Bitlicense landmark, which occurred 10 years ago.
In the statements, Hochul and Harris thanked each other, along with Hochul saying that Harris was working “daily to make our financial system for New Yorkers, while also setting up the department with a regulator that fit for the world’s financial capital.”
Harris Initially employed as acting superintendent In August 2021, after Hochul appointed him to paper, and confirmed by the New York State Senate next January.
“It was like yesterday and a life ago, all at once,” Harris said of his four-year tenure earlier Monday during a look at the Digital Asset Compliance & Market Integrity Summit hosted by Solidus Labs.
At that time, he said, the NYDFS released 11 different pieces of regulatory guide to strengthen the regulator’s bitlicense landmark.
“The industry changed so much from 2015 to 2021 when I entered, it felt really important that we start adding meat to the regulatory seeds,” he said.
This includes the guide for dealing with stablecoins, blockchain analytics and coin lists, among other pieces of information, he said.
“I think it’s a real covenant with what we’ve done outside of DFS that people in the same room of Congress, people on both sides of the aisle, come to us for our technical expertise, for advice, for editing, mostly integrated – not all – but in the current structure of the market market,” he said.
NYDFS also conducted investigations and implementation actions, including Binance Dollar Stablecoin (BUSD) Stablecoin firm issued Paxos Following an investigation Dating back to 2023.
