With Hester Peirce’s SEC Exit, Crypto Industry Loses an Ally

It’s closing time for Crypto Mom’s SEC. 

Friday marks the last day of Hester Peirce’s tenure at the agency, according to her recent resignation letter to President Trump. The commissioner will be returning to academia as an associate professor at the Regent University School of Law, the school announced in May. 

Peirce, who took office in 2018, was a fierce advocate for the crypto industry. She urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to provide clear regulatory roadmaps for digital assets instead of regulating through enforcement, and she publicly criticized her own agency’s early rejections of spot bitcoin ETFs. But now, she’s making her exit when crypto-related lawmaking is at an inflection point: The CLARITY Act, which would have provided a regulatory framework for digital assets, failed to win enough Senate votes to advance this month. The SEC has made it clear it will offer guidance where it can without Congress’ buy-in, most recently via a five-year exemption that allows trading venues to offer tokenized stocks. 

“With Commissioner Peirce’s departure, the SEC has lost a trailblazer who was not afraid to advance boundary-pushing policy ideas,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Her influence will remain with the regulatory direction she helped advance, away from enforcement and regulatory ambiguity and towards clear, technology-neutral rules.”