At the Digital Asset Compliance and Market Integrity (DACOM) Summit in New York today, Sept. 26, Commissioner Peirce led a QA session that featured extensive discussion of the future of regulation for crypto assets.
United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce recently spoke on innovation in cryptocurrencies, calling regulators excessively paternalistic.
Peirce’s benign attitude towards digital assets has earned her the moniker Crypto Mom, towards which she expressed some fondness at the beginning of her appearance at today’s summit:
“It’s been an honor to be adopted by a group of people who are really thinking in such exciting and interesting ways and trying to think about ways to change the world.”
DACOM Summit
Hosting the summit were law firm Hogan Lovells and Solidus Labs, a market surveillance tool provider.
Crypto Mom
Regarding cryptocurrencies, she predicted today that:
“As technology changes, we’ll see them becoming much more the money of the internet.”
In other comments, the commissioner expressed some degree of frustration with the pace of the SEC’s regulation, saying “Frankly, sometimes the SEC needs a push from Congress.” She continued:
“If you want a government that’s more forward-thinking on innovation, that means that if something goes wrong, you can’t go running back to the government and say ‘Hey, you didn’t protect me from myself!’ …I think we need to be a little less paternalistic.”
Hearing earlier this week
As Cointelegraph reported at the time, several commissioners from the SEC including Peirce testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, Sept. 26. Peirce’s commentary at the time expressed similar suspicion towards regulatory overreach.
As the commissioner phrased it at the time, she promoted a philosophy of “regulatory humility”, the need to “always be asking if what we’re doing is right.”
People Will Choose A Currency That Government Can’t Control: Pompliano
The future will not bring competition between digital and non-digital currencies, but between monetary policies, according to Anthony Pompliano.
Pompliano made his comments on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Sept. 27. Ultimately, he believes, people will choose Bitcoin, as a currency that governments can’t control.
The U.S. government should tokenize the dollar immediately
Pompliano was being questioned on how Bitcoin can remain a store of value once the dollar and other currencies have become digital.
Firstly, he said that if he were the US government, he would tokenize the dollar immediately, noting that China is creating a digital Yuan and other countries would follow suit. All money would eventually be digital, he said, and the competition will be between different monetary policies.
However, if the digital Yuan becomes available but a digital dollar is not, then countries will find it easier to buy the Yuan, threatening the dollar’s position as the global reserve currency.
So why would people own Bitcoin if they can own a digital dollar?
When pressed on the original question, Pompliano said that he ultimately believed that people would opt for something that is not manipulatable, nor seizable, nor censorable.
The movement may be slow at first, he said, but people will ultimately choose a currency that the government can’t control.
Morgan Creek Digital co-founder, Pompliano, is a huge advocate of Bitcoin, recently suggesting that its pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, should win the Nobel Peace Prize for its creation.
