At the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Commissioner Hester Peirce has been an active voice supporting progress in regulations that would usher cryptocurrency into a compliant place in the United States financial system.
Crypto enthusiasts have even dubbed her “crypto mom” at various points to show how Peirce is seemingly much more receptive to cryptocurrency as a whole than some other commissioners or officials in other boards and agencies.
Now Peirce is talking about what she has conceived as a “safe harbor” plan to allow token-based projects a number of years as a grace period for securities laws implementation.
This, Peirce says, would allow crypto startups to launch and decentralize projects with less pressure regarding federal law. Coindesk got this quote from her regarding the rationale:
“My hope is I think the same hope that a lot of people in the space have, which is it gives people an opportunity to participate in the economy and society who have before now not been able to participate as fully as they’d like to …I think it gives the opportunity to people to make decisions for themselves.”
Some critics suggest that the rules are not yet fully ironed out, but that may not really be this sticking point for this concept.
Some experts are more concerned about buy-in from the rest of the commission – although there is hope:
“(Peirce’s) support is welcome news for the industry, which can hope that her well-stated views will influence the rest of the Commission to move to adopting a separate securities regulatory framework for cryptocurrency,” write Daniel Nathan and Jorge Pesok at orrick.
Watch this space to see if the safe harbor plan gains traction.
