Hester Peirce

Peirce earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Case Western Reserve University and later a JD from Yale Law School.⁠[1]

She clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and worked as an associate at the law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale).⁠[1]

From 2000 to 2008, Peirce worked on the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, serving as a Staff Attorney in the Division of Investment Management and as counsel to then-Commissioner Paul S. Atkins.⁠[2][1][3]

After leaving the SEC, Peirce served as Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the committee on securities issues.⁠[1][3]

She then researched financial market regulation at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where she served as a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Financial Markets Working Group until joining the SEC as a Commissioner.⁠[1][3]

Peirce and Robert J. Jackson Jr. were nominated as SEC Commissioners by President Trump, and the Senate confirmed their nominations on December 21, 2017. On the morning of January 11, 2018, both were sworn in by SEC Chairman Jay Clayton; Peirce filled a term expiring on June 5, 2020. On taking office, she said it was an honor to return to the SEC to work with her colleagues on the Commission and the staff for the benefit of investors and the American economy.⁠[3][3][3][3]

After the SEC disapproved a proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust on Bats BZX Exchange, Peirce issued a dissent, arguing that the proposal satisfied the statutory standard and should have been approved. She also argued that the Commission’s approach, by precluding greater institutionalization of the bitcoin market, undermined investor protection.⁠[4][4][4]

In a speech in Chicago titled “Running on Empty,” Peirce proposed a token “safe harbor”: as long as certain conditions were met, network developers would receive a three-year grace period during which they could facilitate participation in and the development of a functional or decentralized network while being exempted from the registration provisions of the federal securities laws. She invited feedback from all interested parties.⁠[5][5][5][5]

Peirce released an updated version of the token safe harbor proposal on GitHub. It made three main changes: requiring semi-annual updates to the plan of development disclosure and a block explorer; requiring an exit report at the end of the three-year grace period; and providing guidance on how outside counsel should explain why a network is decentralized. She said she posted the proposal on GitHub to draw on decentralized knowledge.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6]

More than ten years after the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) application was filed, the SEC approved multiple exchanges’ applications to list and trade spot bitcoin ETPs. Peirce issued a statement saying this ended a long, “unnecessary, but consequential” saga, and that the logic of the long string of earlier denials was perplexing.⁠[7][7][7]

SEC Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda announced the launch of a crypto task force led by Peirce, aimed at developing a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets. The SEC acknowledged that it had relied primarily on enforcement actions to regulate the crypto industry retroactively and that it had long been unclear who must register and how; the task force would help the Commission draw clear regulatory lines, provide realistic paths to registration, craft sensible disclosure frameworks, and deploy enforcement resources judiciously.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In a statement as head of the task force, Peirce criticized the Commission for having, over the past decade, refused to use the regulatory tools at its disposal for the crypto industry and repeatedly slammed on the enforcement brakes, along a route whose destination no one could discern; she also cautioned that the new journey toward regulatory clarity still carried risks and that both the Commission and the public needed to stay alert.⁠[9][9][9]

Two months after the task force was formed, Peirce gave the opening remarks at the inaugural roundtable of the “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity” series, calling it a restart of the Commission’s approach to crypto regulation.⁠[10][10][10]

The SEC proposed rules titled “Regulation Crypto Assets,” creating a dedicated offering framework for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets. The proposal includes two registration exemptions: a startup exemption permitting offerings of up to $5 million over four years, and a fundraising exemption, conditioned on financial statements and ongoing reporting, permitting offerings of up to $75 million in each 12-month period; it also includes a conditional safe harbor allowing issuers to delink a crypto asset from the investment contract with which it was associated. In a statement, Peirce connected the proposal to her 2020 “gas station” speech and described it as continuing the work begun since the Crypto Task Force was formed.⁠[11][12][12][12][12][12]

At the SIFMA Digital Assets Conference in New York, Peirce delivered a speech titled “Looking for Change in Haystacks,” noting that it was her penultimate week as a Commissioner. She first described the “Innovation Exemption” the SEC had announced the previous week: a time- and size-limited exemption to facilitate the trading of tokenized securities on crypto networks via automated market makers.⁠[13][13][13][13][14]

The speech’s theme was rethinking financial surveillance in light of new technologies. She argued that the know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) frameworks rest on having financial institutions, under regulatory mandates, collect as much customer information as possible so that law enforcement can find criminals among the law-abiding majority, but that an ever-larger “haystack” of data makes the “needles” harder to find; she also argued that the cost of running the system seems to far exceed its effectiveness at stopping bad actors, while innocent people’s information is tracked, stored, and potentially hacked without their knowledge.⁠[13][13][13][13][13]

She urged the federal government and regulated institutions to move, wherever possible, from prescriptive information collection toward attribute-based verification: for example, using verifiable credentials to prove age, citizenship, accredited investor status, or absence from sanctions lists, and using zero-knowledge proofs to tell a counterparty that a person meets a requirement without revealing their name, income, or address. She also proposed making it easier for registered entities to rely on third-party identity verification for customer identification program (CIP) purposes, so that the same customer’s sensitive information is not repeatedly collected by dozens of institutions. She further argued that public blockchains leave a permanent, public, auditable ledger of transactions that law enforcement can analyze with blockchain forensics tools.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

On October 1, 2026, the SEC approved a proposal to amend the custody rules for registered investment advisers and regulated funds, including provisions on crypto asset custody; Peirce issued a statement saying she hoped it foreshadowed a calm end to the regulatory “roller coaster” of crypto custody.⁠[15]

The same day, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins and Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda issued a statement on Peirce’s departure, saying she had served two tours at the SEC, had long advocated regulatory clarity for digital assets and challenged regulation by enforcement, and had thereby earned her leadership of the Crypto Task Force. The SEC’s commissioners page lists her as a former Commissioner with a term from January 2018 to October 2026; as of October 2026, the SEC’s list of commissioners includes only Chairman Atkins and Commissioner Uyeda.⁠[2][2][2][2][1][16][16]

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: Official website: https://www.sec.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]