Hester Peirce is stepping down, but the SEC’s shift on crypto is already on the record.
She leaves on October 2 to teach at Regent University School of Law. The SEC will be left with just Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda.
For eight years, she was the lone dissenter: when the SEC rejected the Winklevoss brothers’ Bitcoin ETF in 2018, she wrote a dissent; later, as “regulation by enforcement” took hold, she repeatedly criticized it.
After she became head of the crypto task force in 2025, the tide turned—the SEC went on to drop or put on hold at least nine cases against crypto companies, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance.
Now the real uncertainty is about who’s in charge: the SEC has just two commissioners, the White House hasn’t nominated a successor, and the CLARITY Act is still stalled in the Senate. Industry insiders worry that rules without a legal foundation could be changed by the next administration—so they’re watching October 20, the deadline for comments on Regulation Crypto Assets.
#SEC suspends crypto ETF reviews amid funding lapse
She leaves on October 2 to teach at Regent University School of Law. The SEC will be left with just Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda.
For eight years, she was the lone dissenter: when the SEC rejected the Winklevoss brothers’ Bitcoin ETF in 2018, she wrote a dissent; later, as “regulation by enforcement” took hold, she repeatedly criticized it.
After she became head of the crypto task force in 2025, the tide turned—the SEC went on to drop or put on hold at least nine cases against crypto companies, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance.
Now the real uncertainty is about who’s in charge: the SEC has just two commissioners, the White House hasn’t nominated a successor, and the CLARITY Act is still stalled in the Senate. Industry insiders worry that rules without a legal foundation could be changed by the next administration—so they’re watching October 20, the deadline for comments on Regulation Crypto Assets.
#SEC suspends crypto ETF reviews amid funding lapse
