United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce, sometimes known as Crypto Mom for her ardent support of the industry, spoke Tuesday at a conference hosted by the conservative-libertarian Federalist Society titled “Regulating the New Crypto Ecosystem: Necessary Regulation or Crippling Future Innovation?” Her lengthy remarks — over 4,000 words in the prepared version, which was augmented extemporaneously as she presented it — contain some of the bluntest criticisms of SEC policy she has made yet.
Peirce characterized the SEC’s attitude toward the crypto market as a “refusal to engage” and suggested that the SEC’s refusal so far to approve a spot-traded Bitcoin (BTC) product showed the agency’s determination to hold everything related to Bitcoin to a higher standard than other products it regulates.