‘Crypto Mom’ Hester Peirce nominated for second term at SEC

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

One of the digital currency-friendly officials in the. U.S. government has been nominated for a second five-year term in her post. Hester Peirce has been tapped for another term as one of the five commissioners at the SEC.

Peirce took office five years ago under the Obama administration. When Trump took over, he nominated her to see out the remaining two years of her term. Her term ends on June 5, according to a Bloomberg report.

Peirce is one of 10 nominations sent to Senate for approval by the White House. If the Senate approves her reappointment, she will serve in the SEC in a five-year term that will expire on June 5, 2025. The law allows her to continue serving for the next 18 months as she awaits Senate confirmation.

The Yale-trained lawyer has served in the U.S. government for close to two decades. Her previous roles include a stint with the SEC as an attorney in the investment management division. She was also a staff member in the Senate Committee on Banking and Housing.

Peirce is fondly known as ‘Crypto Mom’, a title she earned in 2018. This was after she dissented from the SEC’s order that ruled out a proposed policy change that would allow Gemini exchange to list a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF).

In her dissent, she argued that the SEC’s decision contradicted its mandate. Such a product would allow institutional investors to get into the digital currency industry, she stated.

“In addition, I am concerned that the Commission’s approach undermines investor protection by precluding greater institutionalization of the bitcoin market. More institutional participation would ameliorate many of the Commission’s concerns with the bitcoin market that underlie its disapproval order,” she said.

She instantly became a hit with the digital currency community. Her Twitter following shot up ten times a day after her dissent. Since then, Crypto Mom has continued to advocate for positive regulations for the digital currency industry.

Earlier this year, the SEC shot down yet another digital currency ETF, this time from NYSE’s Arca Exchange. Peirce dissented once again, this time calling out the SEC as anti-digital currency.

She stated, “This line of disapprovals leads me to conclude that this Commission is unwilling to approve the listing of any product that would provide access to the market for bitcoin and that no filing will meet the ever-shifting standards that this Commission insists on applying to bitcoin-related products—and only to bitcoin-related products.”