SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce was just tapped to run the crypto task force at the SEC and zGuz lists three things she predicted would happen under a pro-crypto SEC

In January 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission created a new Crypto Task Force and designated Commissioner Hester M. Peirce to lead it as part of a broader “SEC Crypto 2.0” initiative. Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda framed the task force as a shift away from a primarily enforcement-led approach toward building a more comprehensive and predictable regulatory framework for crypto assets. The group’s mandate includes drawing clearer lines on which digital assets are securities, designing realistic registration paths for projects and intermediaries, tailoring disclosure requirements for crypto, and using enforcement resources more selectively. The task force is also tasked with coordinating with Congress, the CFTC, other federal agencies, and international and state regulators. Since its launch, Peirce and the task force have solicited extensive public input and begun laying groundwork for rulemaking. In a detailed request for information titled “There Must Be Some Way Out of Here,” Peirce asked market participants over 50 questions on issues such as crypto taxonomy, public offerings and disclosure, potential safe harbors for token projects, secondary market trading, and custody/recordkeeping challenges. Additional workstreams include guidance for national securities exchanges and ATSs on trading crypto asset securities and pairs of securities vs. non-securities crypto assets, as well as roundtables on topics like privacy and financial surveillance, where Peirce has argued that expanding financial privacy and avoiding unnecessary surveillance and forced intermediation should be key principles. Collectively, this positions Peirce—long considered one of the SEC’s more crypto-sympathetic commissioners—as a central figure in any move toward a more “pro-crypto” SEC, with potential implications for how tokens are classified, how trading venues operate, and how new projects come to market.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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