Hester Peirce’s exit leaves the SEC’s crypto task force without a named successor
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, the agency’s most visible crypto ally, resigns effective October 2, and the SEC has not said who takes over the Crypto Task Force she has led since 2025.
Peirce announced the departure on September 25 in a post on X with the message “T minus 7” and a photo of her resignation letter. She joined the commission on January 11, 2018 and served nearly nine years, much of it pushing for crypto rules during the enforcement-heavy chairmanships of Jay Clayton and Gary Gensler. In November she joins Regent University School of Law as an associate professor teaching securities regulation and digital assets.
The task force she leaves behind sits at the center of a policy machine now shifting from lawsuits to formal rulemaking. The SEC has begun drafting Regulation Crypto Assets, a framework for offering crypto assets without triggering stringent securities rules, and launched an innovation exemption that permits tokenized securities within a limited five-year framework. The same day Peirce posted her letter, the agency issued a crypto FAQ covering staking receipt tokens, “essential managerial efforts” and when a secondary market counts as a promoter.
Her own proposals shaped much of that agenda. She put forward safe harbor periods that would give token startups time to decentralize before full securities regulation applies, and she was appointed to lead the task force before Chairman Paul Atkins arrived.
The succession question is unresolved. The commission has named no replacement for the task force role, and Peirce’s exit drops the SEC to two seated commissioners, Atkins and Mark Uyeda, the bare minimum needed to act, with three seats open. The White House has so far declined to name nominees for the SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and whether it will fill the vacancies is unclear.
Days before the announcement, Peirce used a September 23 speech at SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association)’s digital assets conference to argue that regulators can catch criminals while collecting less personal data, citing zero-knowledge proofs and attribute-based credentials. The remarks were her personal position, not SEC policy.
