The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is finally sitting down with the crypto industry to figure out how to regulate digital assets. Hester Peirce, one of the SEC commissioners and head of its crypto task force, said the agency is ready to build a system that works for both the government and the industry.
“I think we’re ready for the spring ahead,” she said at the SEC’s first crypto-focused roundtable on Friday, referring to the event’s title, “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity.”
Peirce pointed out the biggest challenge which is figuring out which crypto assets count as securities and which don’t. “Can we translate the characteristics of a security into a simple taxonomy that will cover the many different types of crypto assets that exist today and may exist in the future?” she asked. The roundtable brought industry experts and SEC officials together to discuss possible answers.
SEC Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda explained that the agency is working on different ways to approach crypto regulation. While some crypto areas, like memecoins and mining, have been declared outside securities laws, others remain unclear. “Each statement issued so far ultimately is a staff statement,” Uyeda said, meaning that these statements don’t have legal power but show where the SEC might be heading.
Uyeda also said the SEC should have provided clearer guidance earlier instead of relying on enforcement actions. “When judicial opinions have created uncertainty from our participants in the past, the commission and its staff have stepped in to provide guidance,” he said, suggesting that crypto should have received the same treatment.
The event included a panel discussion with securities lawyers and crypto industry insiders. Troy Paredes, a former SEC commissioner, asked panelist Sarah Brennan from Delphi Ventures what the biggest concern was for crypto businesses. Brennan said that because of unclear rules, many new crypto projects act more like companies going public. Instead of spreading their tokens widely, they keep things private for longer, trying to avoid legal issues.
However, not everyone at the roundtable was supportive of the crypto industry. Former SEC attorney John Reed Stark criticized the market, saying it still lacks real-world use. “Whether you’re talking yield farms or ostrich farms or orange groves, the whole point of securities regulation was to wrap that all up into a very big, broad, principles-based regulation,” he said. He added that if crypto disappeared tomorrow, most people wouldn’t care unless they were invested.
The SEC’s approach to crypto has also caught the attention of lawmakers. Before the roundtable, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jake Auchincloss sent a letter to Uyeda questioning the SEC’s recent staff statement on memecoins.
They wanted to know if the White House had influenced the statement and why it wasn’t turned into an official rule. They also asked how the SEC defines memecoins and whether specific examples were considered in the decision.
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