For more than eight years, Commissioner Peirce served as a principled voice at the Commission. Under the previous SEC Chairman, she frequently dissented when the Commission chose to bring enforcement actions rather than write rules the industry could comply with. She proposed a token safe harbor years before regulators were ready to listen. She led the Crypto Task Force and insisted that the agency’s duty to protect investors meant it must use its authority to provide regulatory guardrails for the rapidly expanding industry
Commissioner Peirce brought humility, conviction, and a sense of humor to work every day. Washington could use more like her. Although she will no longer be at the SEC, her presence and the ideals she stood for will live on
Will Schwartz is a Policy Associate at Blockchain Association, where he conducts research and analysis on digital asset legislation, regulation, and emerging policy developments
In some of her last public remarks as Commissioner, at SIFMA’s Digital Assets Conference on September 23, Peirce did not take a victory lap. Rather, she outlined the work that is still to be done—even in her absence. As she described in her speech, our society is at a great crossroads. Down one road is the world we’ve been living in: dragnet surveillance, the datafication of every aspect of life, and cybersecurity breaches that expose our most sensitive information to bad actors all around the world. Down the other is a world of both privacy and security, where Americans can prove that they’re following the law without handing over their sensitive personal information
Commissioner Peirce has firsthand experience seeing how our financial regulations are designed to extract as much personal data from American consumers as possible. For more than 50 years, our regulatory framework has been built upon the mass collection and storage of personal data from all Americans who interact with the financial system. Businesses collect personal data from consumers and share it with the government, which aims to track down actual criminal activity — the “needle,” as Commissioner Peirce puts it, in the “haystack” of innocent, unassuming Americans’ data
The technologies that allow for a more private, consumer-centric digital economy already exist. As Commissioner Peirce said in her remarks, “What is missing is the regulatory framework that would allow and encourage their adoption.”
It is incumbent upon us to continue Commissioner Peirce’s mission. Technology exists that allows consumers to maintain control over their data while satisfying legal obligations that provide law enforcement with the information necessary to monitor transactions and pursue bad actors. We need a regulatory framework designed for the modern era that allows privacy-enhancing technology to be used to minimize the unnecessary exposure of consumer data. That future is in reach, and it is a distinctly American one. As a nation, we have never accepted that liberty is the price of security. Commissioner Peirce carried that conviction through eight years at the SEC. Now, it’s our turn to carry it forward
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates
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