'Crypto Mom' Hester Peirce to Step Down as SEC Commissioner
Summary
- Hester Peirce, a commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, will formally step down next week.
- Peirce said the security tokenization (ST) framework and Innovation Exemption she led helped create a foundation for testing the issuance and trading of tokenized securities.
- Peirce’s resignation will leave the SEC with only two commissioners, making a temporary slowdown in the pace of policy decisions difficult to avoid.
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Hester Peirce, the US Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner known as “Crypto Mom” for her strong support of the US digital-asset industry, will formally step down next week.
A resignation letter Peirce posted on X on September 25 said her term will end on October 2. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s administration, Peirce has led the SEC’s crypto task force, laying out definitions for key market issues including staking, mining and meme coins.
One of her biggest achievements was the Innovation Exemption, a framework that opened the door to security tokenization, or ST. The measure created a five-year grace period to test the issuance and trading of tokenized securities before using the results to establish a permanent system.
Peirce repeatedly clashed with the enforcement-focused approach pursued under former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, a Republican, and former Chair Gary Gensler, a Democrat. After leaving the SEC, she will join Regent University School of Law as an associate professor.
Peirce’s departure leaves the SEC with only two commissioners: Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda. Under SEC rules, two commissioners are enough for a quorum, allowing the agency to vote on agenda items and continue operations. Even so, the pace of the commission’s policy decisions stands to slow temporarily. The Trump White House has so far delayed nominating Democratic commissioners to both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
