SEC Commissioners Critique Regulatory Approaches To Crypto

SEC Commissioners Hester M. Peirce and Caroline A. Crenshaw critiqued current regulatory approaches to the crypto industry.

In a speech at the Texas Blockchain Summit, Ms. Peirce questioned the SEC's approach to cryptocurrencies. Alluding to SEC Chair Gary Gensler's comparison of the "cryptoverse" to the "Wild West," Ms. Peirce pointed out similarities between the two "frontiers," such as the lack of regulatory oversight freeing the community to "collectively figure out how to deal with unanticipated problems." Ms. Peirce explained that, as cattle ranchers in the Wild West established codes for their own ranches, the markets during this period have created their own "protection and arbitration agencies." She noted, for example, that the crypto industry has "[p]rotocol users, competitors, bug bounty hunters, and sophisticated skeptics [to] monitor protocols for hints of centralization, administrator keys vulnerable to compromise, slow speed, high costs, lax