SEC Forms New Crypto Task Force Spearheaded by Hester Peirce

In a Tuesday announcement, the SEC admitted it “can bash better” erstwhile it comes to crypto regulation.

Jan 21, 2025, 7:08 p.m. UTC

Gary Gensler lone officially stepped down arsenic president of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday, but the national agency’s attack to crypto is already getting an overhaul.

Acting Chair Mark Uyeda announced Tuesday that the bureau has created a crypto task unit dedicated to “developing a broad and wide regulatory model for crypto assets.” The task unit volition beryllium led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, a long-time advocator for the crypto industry, and volition enactment intimately with the crypto manufacture to make regulations. The task unit volition besides enactment with Congress, providing “technical assistance” arsenic it crafts crypto regulations.

Both the code and contented of the SEC’s Tuesday announcement bespeak a extremist displacement successful the agency’s attack to crypto regularisation nether the caller Trump administration.

“To date, the SEC has relied chiefly connected enforcement actions to modulate crypto retroactively and reactively, often adopting caller and untested ineligible interpretations on the way,” the connection said. “Clarity regarding who indispensable register, and applicable solutions for those seeking to register, person been elusive. The effect has been disorder astir what is legal, which creates an situation hostile to innovation and conducive to fraud. The SEC tin bash better.”

The SEC’s caller crypto task unit volition besides coordinate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – which, nether the enactment of erstwhile Chair Gensler and erstwhile CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam, has been locked successful contention with the SEC implicit which bureau should beryllium the superior regulator of the crypto industry.

“This undertaking volition instrumentality time, patience, and overmuch hard work. It volition win lone if the Task Force has input from a wide scope of investors, manufacture participants, academics, and different funny parties. We look guardant to moving hand-in-hand with the nationalist to foster a regulatory situation that protects investors, facilitates superior formation, fosters marketplace integrity, and supports innovation,” said Commissioner Peirce successful a statement.

The SEC previously published unit guidance successful 2019, though it has not been referenced oregon discussed overmuch successful the past 5 years.

Cheyenne Ligon

On the quality squad astatine CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses connected crypto regularisation and crime. Cheyenne is primitively from Houston, Texas. She studied governmental subject astatine Tulane University successful Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, wherever she focused connected concern and economics reporting. She has nary important crypto holdings.