Hester Pease, who leads the crypto taskforce formed by SEC about two weeks ago, visited her unit.
The short message: Please be patient as we are currently working on many things.
Peirce criticized (no surprises) the SEC’s former path. It “incessantly slammed on the enforcement brakes as it lurched along a meandering route with a destination not discernible to anyone.”
The handling of crypto “has been marked by legal imprecision and commercial impracticality” If you don’t know, Peirce was feeling a certain way.
Take time “disentangle all these strands,” she noted several times — ongoing litigation included. The New York Times reports that the SEC is planning to reduce staff dedicated to crypto enforcement.
Pierce mentions that crypto assets are governed by securities laws. “fundamental to resolving many other questions.” The information that I was given by Bitwise General Counsel Katherine Dowling when it came to the “dolphins in the fish nets” — alluding to assets the SEC has previously labeled as securities.
Another priority is to identify areas that fall outside the SEC’s jurisdiction — a signal the agency intends to stay in its lane.
There are also other areas of focus, such as creating a system for custodianing clients’ assets; clarifying whether and how crypto-lending and staking programmes fall under the securities laws and creating a cross-border sandbox.
On crypto ETFs, the task force will be clear about its approach when approving/disapproving planned products, Peirce promises. As issuers look to add staking and in-kind creations/redemptions to existing products, she added, the SEC may first need to make progress on custody (and other) issues.
SEC is striving to achieve these goals “in an orderly, practical and legally defensible way,” Peirce’s clear statement.
“And so she says to those who want change: “It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it is going to take us some time to get out of it.”
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