Securities Regulation Daily Wrap Up, BLOCKCHAIN—Commissioner Peirce urges tech world to bring forth new privacy-protecting applications, (May 28, 2026)
The commissioner suggested that law enforcement, investor protection, and privacy are not necessarily conflicting goals.
SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, speaking to an audience at the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown Law, delivered brief remarks in which she observed that the traditional balancing of law enforcement objectives against individual privacy and freedom can lead to the discounting of new technologies that may alter policy perceptions about just how much those goals may be in conflict.
“I urge us as a society to view technologies as an opportunity to increase people’s ability to protect themselves from bad actors, not as an opportunity for the government to watch more of what its citizens do,” said Peirce.
Peirce suggested that the development of privacy-enhancing technologies could shift government enforcement efforts toward law breakers and away from the monitoring of ordinary citizens. Peirce added: “These new technologies should be an opportunity for us to refocus government surveillance on bad actors and activities that are most likely to be nefarious and away from the everyday actions of innocent people.”
As an example, Peirce noted that SEC regulations include a mandate for transfer agents to record certain key data about securities holders, including names and physical addresses. By contrast, she explained that crypto networks, which operate on the theory of being permissionless, can enable funds to be transferred via public wallets that are pseudonymous in nature.
“If transfer agents were given the flexibility to record that securities reside on the blockchain at a public address, we could save investors the risk of having to hand over information about where they live to people they have never met and rarely interact with. Another honeypot of data would be spared,” said Peirce.
Peirce urged audience members to continue to pursue the development of new technologies that can protect individual privacy, a topic she said that often does not receive adequate attention.
“Too often, though, the discourse in this city about privacy casts anyone who demands it in a negative light,” said Peirce. “I have watched in troubled amazement as the goal of facilitating government surveillance drives regulatory decisions and expectations about how products and services should be built.”
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