Trump’s SEC Crypto Task Force Reveals Plan to Get Out of Regulatory ‘Mess’

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who long ago earned the nickname “Crypto Mom,” has laid out how the watchdog will regulate the digital asset industry with its new crypto task force—and did so in a letter that blasted the previous administration’s approach.

Peirce, who was announced as the new task force’s boss last month, wrote Tuesday that the SEC would take a while to get on track and regulate a fast-moving and arcane industry.

“It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it is going to take us some time to get out of it,” Peirce wrote.

But she added: “The crypto road trip on which the newly announced crypto task force has embarked likewise should be more enjoyable and less risky than the crypto road trip the Commission has taken the industry on for the last decade.”

The SEC during the Biden Administration targeted some of the most recognizable American crypto brands with lawsuits, and its former Chair Gary Gensler repeatedly said that the vast majority of digital assets fell under the definition of a security.

Some in the crypto industry—as well as lawmakers and regulators like Commissioner Peirce—argued that the SEC ran with a “regulation by enforcement” approach under Gensler: hitting crypto companies with lawsuits rather than creating a clear set of rules for them to follow.

But the regulator is expected to be less hostile under the new Trump Administration: President Trump, as part of his deregulatory approach, campaigned to help the industry and even launched his own Solana meme coin ahead of his inauguration.

In Wednesday’s letter, Commissioner Peirce said that the regulator was working hard to decide which cryptocurrencies should actually be considered securities; whether those interested in registering token offerings should have a viable path for doing so; and be clearer on whether crypto lending and staking programs fall within the regulator’s jurisdiction.

Peirce also noted that the firm is receiving applications to list new kinds of crypto exchange-traded funds or ETFs; Bitcoin and Ethereum funds were approved and launched in 2024, but XRP, Solana, and Dogecoin funds are now in the works too, among others. There are also applications to enable additional functionality around crypto ETFs, such as staking rewards for assets.

The SEC will “provide clear statements about the approach used when approving or disapproving these applications,” Peirce said, in contrast to how many such ETF filings were treated in the past.

Peirce added that the task force was also prioritizing working with market participants interested in tokenizing securities or “otherwise using blockchain technology to modernize traditional financial markets,” and that it would also work on an appropriate regulatory framework for investment advisers to custody assets.

The statement added that the task force has a new email address—crypto@sec.gov—that those in the digital asset space can write to with feedback.

Edited by Andrew Hayward