US SEC Commissioner Peirce Speaks

Today’s no-action letter from the Division of Corporation Finance concerning DoubleZero’s token distributions designed to facilitate the programmatic functioning of a decentralized physical infrastructure network (i.e., DePIN) offers an opportunity to reflect on how we, as regulators, can foster innovation without expanding our reach beyond what Congress has mandated. Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to oversee the securities markets, not to regulate all economic activity. DePIN represents a novel way of ...

Thank you, Chairman Atkins, Commissioner Crenshaw, and Commissioner Uyeda, and thank you all for joining us in-person or online for the final afternoon of the Crypto Task Force’s Spring Sprint roundtable series: “DeFi and the American Spirit.” Thank you especially to our moderator, Troy Paredes, who is returning after his excellent performance at our first roundtable back in March. Troy, we are grateful to have you here again as we wrap up. I also appreciate today’s panelists for being part of the discussion. Over the past four ...

Thank you, Preston [Pysh], for that introduction. Before I begin, let me remind you that my views are my own as a Commissioner and not necessarily those of the SEC or my fellow Commissioners. The poems of Robert Frost, born on this day in 1874, were among those that filled my childhood. I memorized “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”[1] a poem about a traveler, accompanied only by his hesitant horse, stopping to admire the falling snow in the forest. Although lyrical verses of securities law have since largely displaced more ...

Let me start by reminding you that my views are my own as a Commissioner and not necessarily those of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) or my fellow Commissioners. It is good to be back at SEC Speaks and to know that the content shared here today is available for anyone who may wish to access it. Last time I was here, I talked about the SEC’s “secret garden”—the maze of staff guidance that serves to define practices across the securities industry in a way that may be inconsistent with a plain reading of the rulebook. ...

Hester Peirce, commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, isn’t quite sure what her agency’s endgame appears to be. “There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for a lot of cases we bring,” Peirce said Thursday during a fireside discussion at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit in Washington, DC. Peirce’s agency brought a total of 784 enforcement actions during the 2023 fiscal year, a 3% increase from 2022, largely thanks to SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s escalating interest in the cryptocurrency space. The SEC ...

SEC COMMISSIONER HESTER PEIRCE SAYS APPLICATION QUEUE IS GROWING POST GRAYSCALE REVERSAL PEIRCE: PROBLEMATIC THAT BITCOIN PRODUCTS GET MORE SEC SCRUTINY *PEIRCE: WORRY SOME SEC CRYPTO ACTION COULD HAVE ADVERSE IMPACT