SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce said on Wednesday that privacy-enhancing technologies can support investor protection and called on technologists to bring privacy-preserving compliance tools to the SEC Crypto Task Force she leads.
Speaking at the Regulatory PETshop Series at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., Peirce said regulatory thinking is too often shaped by the goal of expanding government surveillance. The views were her own, she said, not necessarily those of the Commission.
“I have watched in troubled amazement as the goal of facilitating government surveillance drives regulatory decisions and expectations about how products and services should be built,” Peirce said.
She pointed to a concrete example from the Crypto Task Force’s work. Current rules require transfer agents to record the name and physical address of security holders. Peirce argued that if transfer agents could instead record that securities reside on-chain at a public wallet address, investors would avoid handing personal information to parties they rarely interact with.
Peirce also invited developers with tools that can meet KYC and anti-money laundering requirements while limiting collection of personally identifiable information to engage directly with the task force. The SEC established the Crypto Task Force in January 2025 to clarify how federal securities laws apply to crypto markets.
