Hester Peirce Says Crypto Markets Should Self-Regulate When Possible
Hester M. Peirce, United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner has argued that self-regulation for cryptocurrency markets should be allowed when possible. The commissioner made her remarks during a public talk together with former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Gary Gensler at the MIT Bitcoin Expo 2019.
The context for Hester’s comments was a proposal from Gensler that a more robust and unified national level regulatory framework would be desirable. In Gensler’s opinion, this would encompass not only trading platforms that offer security tokens or complex investment instruments, but also those that list commodities such as Bitcoin (BTC). Peirce then responded:
“One really important thing to remember is that people regulate each other in their interactions with one another, and that’s the whole purpose of the Bitcoin idea, that it would be a community that would be able to regulate itself. As problems arise, people in that community are thinking about how to deal with those problems. One model would be to have a government regulator, but I don’t think that’s the only model.”
Gensler’s arguments in favor of extending national level regulation over a broader spectrum of crypto trading centered on improving investor protection, coordinating money laundering prevention and addressing the current regulatory and enforcement discrepancies across different states.