On Feb. 4, 2025, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, in her role as head of the Commission's newly minted Crypto Task Force, provided additional detail regarding the task force's objectives. She began by managing expectations, describing the Task Force's work as a "journey" that "will take time," particularly with respect to "[d]etermining how best to disentangle" the "many cases" in pending litigation. "Please be patient," she said. "The Task Force wants to get to a good place, but we need to do so in an orderly, practical, and legally defensible way."
During the same period, significant changes to the SEC Division of Enforcement's Cyber and Crypto Unit (CACU) were publicly reported, including the reassigning of staff to other tasks within the division and at least one unit leader reassigned to a non-Enforcement post, this just two years after the agency beefed up CACU headcount as it pursued a flurry of alleged failure-to-register and fraud-related cases.
In her statement, Commissioner Peirce identified 10 Task Force priorities:
Commissioner Peirce explicitly welcomes requests for no-action letters – something not seen in some time with respect to crypto. Many will welcome a return to the practice of issuing crypto no-action letters. Such official statements of the SEC, which are publicly available on its website, may provide crypto industry participants a better understanding of the regulatory risks while the Task Force works toward its objectives.
Commissioner Peirce concluded her statement by again soliciting public comment and providing a form for requesting meetings with the Task Force "to discuss approaches to addressing issues related to regulation of crypto assets[.]" Persons requesting meetings are asked to provide a summary of the issues to be discussed, with the summary (and any other public comments) to be posted to the SEC's website. The SEC is not known for inviting market participants to request meetings with it, and many will undoubtedly take the Commissioner up on her offer.
The SECond Opinions Blog will continue to monitor crypto-related activity and provide updates.
