Regulation
“I’m not your mother” – DL News
- The staunch cryptocurrency advocate spoke about her career at the SEC.
- She discussed the election, the “frustration” in some cases of the SEC and the Stoner Cats.
Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce is happy to talk about crypto innovation.
Don’t just call her “crypto mom.”
Peirce has earned the affection of the crypto industry — and the nickname “crypto mom” — for her support of the industry and her scathing dissents to proposed rules and lawsuits brought against the industry under Chairman Gary Gensler.
Yet Peirce, who leans toward libertarianism, says she sees crypto as a choice that American consumers should be able to make for themselves.
“I find it funny, but at the same time I have a little problem with the term ‘mom’,” the commissioner said. said DL News in an interview last week.
“I’m not your mother.”
DL News spoke to Peirce about the SEC’s crypto crackdown, crypto exchange-traded funds, and the upcoming election.
A new chair
Some have suggested that Peirce – one of two Republican SEC commissioners – could be its next chairman if Donald Trump is elected president in November.
Join the community to receive our latest stories and updates
It would be a boon for the crypto industry, for which Gensler has become an iconic foe.
Gensler’s term runs through 2026, but SEC chairs tend to step down earlier than usual if a new administration takes office.
“If the chairman changes, the SEC chairman will typically change in response to that,” Peirce said.
The position is powerful.
The president sets the agency’s agenda, and does so independently of the executive branch, which is not necessarily the case with all federal regulators.
Asked about succession at the SEC, Peirce declined to make any predictions.
“It could really be anyone – the president has a lot of latitude” to choose, she said.
Cryptocurrency Laws
Some politicians are convinced that crypto voters could swing key states in the November elections.
Similarly, lawmakers realized they needed to move quickly to pass cryptocurrency legislation.
The FIT21 Act, which creates a market structure for cryptocurrencies, passed the House of Representatives in May.
The bill would give the SEC’s sister agency, the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission, more authority over cryptocurrency spot markets.
Gensler and his CFTC counterpart, Rostin Behnam, work closely together. But they clearly disagree on one point: While Gensler says most cryptocurrencies are securities, Behnam considers them commodities.
The SEC and CFTC “need to step back and remember that we both serve the American people.”
— Hester Peirce
Peirce said she does not view the SEC’s relationship with the CFTC as a rivalry, and is pleased to see Congress working to decide where to allocate authority.
“We have to step back and remember that we serve both the American people and the American markets. We have to think about who is best suited to perform which function, as Congress has asked us to do,” she said.
Legislation for the industry must take into account that potential innovation has nothing to do with crypto’s status as a financial asset, she said.
“There’s a lot going on in the cryptocurrency space that has nothing to do with financial markets,” Peirce said.
Decentralized physical infrastructure, for example, does not fit neatly into a financial legal framework.
Regulations by application
Cryptocurrency industry lobbyists say they want regulation because without it, the SEC must resort to repression.
The Supreme Court recently gave hope to cryptocurrency plaintiffs.
In a historic reversal of the so-called Chevron doctrine, the Court essentially made it easier for judges to overrule regulators in cases where the laws are unclear.
Peirce said the agency was “still considering” what impact the decision might have on its records.
She said, however, that she had always been committed to following the intentions of Congress.
“We have to stick strictly to what Congress has told us to do,” she said.
The SEC must ensure that it sticks to the authority Congress has given it and does not try to “adopt overly aggressive interpretations.”
Peirce did not comment on open cases — the agency is currently pursuing exchanges Coinbase, Binance and Kraken, among others.
But she said the SEC’s legal victory against blockchain publishing company LBRY was the lowest point of her career as commissioner.
“It was a project that had really substantial work done on it, and yet we decided to take legal action and ended up stopping it,” she said.
The SEC alleged that LBRY violated securities laws.
“There was no allegation of fraud – it was a registration violation – and that struck me as problematic,” Peirce said.
A lawsuit against the Stoner Cats nonfungible token project, which the parties settled, appears arbitrary, Peirce said.
“If we had applied similar logic in other contexts, we could bring lawsuits against all sorts of issuers of non-digital collectibles,” she said.
Unlike Gensler, who often says that cryptocurrency companies should just “go to the SEC and register,” Peirce said it’s difficult for cryptocurrency companies to access help from the regulator.
“There is a real demand for widespread advice, and we could have disseminated it and helped these two projects, as well as many others,” she said.
ETF Approvals
Investors are eagerly awaiting SEC approval of Ethereum ETFs, which Gensler said would likely happen this summer.
Peirce would not say whether the SEC would approve the Solana ETF applications.
But she said crypto ETFs should be treated the same way.
“That’s what was my biggest frustration with the Bitcoin ETF saga. We went back and forth for 10 years” with issuers, she said, until a court ruled that the SEC had to allow ETFs.
“We simply had to apply the same rules as for other things and look at the facts and circumstances of each application.”
She cautioned, however, that a green light from the SEC does not constitute an endorsement of the product’s safety.
“Investors have different risk tolerances, different goals, different portfolios. Their investment horizons are different,” she said.
After all, she’s nobody’s mother: she doesn’t tell anyone how to invest.
“As an individual, you can make choices for yourself and your family better than anyone else because you know your situation and your dreams best,” she said.
“Too often, as regulators, we step in and say, ‘I’m going to tell you what you should do with your life.'”
Contact the author at joanna@dlnews.com.