Hester Peirce, the SEC commissioner crypto nicknamed "Crypto Mom," leaves the agency today (Oct 2) for a law professorship. Her last act as Crypto Task Force chief: an Oct 1 proposal letting investment advisers and funds custody crypto, including self-custody in limited cases and state trust companies as custodians.
The custody rule is a real shift. Advisers could hold client crypto themselves when no permitted custodian is available for an asset, but they'd have to prove that for each asset and re-justify it every quarter. It's a door, not a free pass.
The bigger story is who's left. With Peirce gone, the SEC has two sitting commissioners out of five: Chair Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda. Both lean crypto-friendly, so the direction likely doesn't reverse. But she was the one translating between industry legal teams and the rulemaking machine, and a lot is still pending: the broader crypto-asset framework, commodity-trust options deadlines, and the custody rewrite itself.
A two-person commission can still vote. What it loses is bandwidth and the person who knew this file best.
Does crypto policy at the SEC keep its momentum with two commissioners, or did the industry just lose its most effective insider?
#SEC #CryptoRegulation
The custody rule is a real shift. Advisers could hold client crypto themselves when no permitted custodian is available for an asset, but they'd have to prove that for each asset and re-justify it every quarter. It's a door, not a free pass.
The bigger story is who's left. With Peirce gone, the SEC has two sitting commissioners out of five: Chair Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda. Both lean crypto-friendly, so the direction likely doesn't reverse. But she was the one translating between industry legal teams and the rulemaking machine, and a lot is still pending: the broader crypto-asset framework, commodity-trust options deadlines, and the custody rewrite itself.
A two-person commission can still vote. What it loses is bandwidth and the person who knew this file best.
Does crypto policy at the SEC keep its momentum with two commissioners, or did the industry just lose its most effective insider?
#SEC #CryptoRegulation
