Commissioner Peirce Births Following among Crypto Set

A series of contrarian opinions that favor innovative technologies has gained SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce the moniker “Crypto Mom,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Peirce, who joined the SEC in 2017, has warned regulators against stifling innovation and criticized the SEC’s strict crackdown on initial coin offerings. In a recent speech, Peirce again assailed the regulatory structure that creates roadblocks to innovative products like cryptocurrencies. “Regulators are coming to terms with crypto in different ways and do not always coordinate with one another, so the United States is admittedly sending mixed messages,” she remarked by video at the Crypto Valley Summit in Switzerland. In another speech she said regulators can help change the way people think about them by working in good faith with people who are trying to use the regulatory framework to raise money.  Peirce acknowledged that token offerings present unique and thorny issues but urged against regulatory barriers simply because blockchain or crypto is involved.  “One way to encourage people who are raising money in token offerings to do so legally is to show them that the process works and does not take so long as to be unusable by issuers.”