Securities Regulation Daily Wrap Up, SEC NEWS AND SPEECHES—Crypto roundtable participants weigh the intersection of financial privacy and market surveillance, (Dec 15, 2025)

By Suzanne Cosgrove

The current administration believes in the importance of trusting Americans to manage their own affairs, “including when it comes to crypto,” said SEC Chairman Atkins.

Speaking to industry executives and regulators at the start of a SEC Crypto Task Force roundtable on Monday, Commission Chair Paul Atkins said crypto has been “a forcing function,” for regulators considering the balance between the need for market surveillance and privacy “in the context of 21st century technology.”

That balance is challenging. “On the one hand, the federal government has an obligation to protect Americans from national security interests and threats, including through measures such as the Bank Secrecy Act, which Treasury and other agencies use to deter illicit finance,” Atkins said. “On the other hand, being free to conduct one’s affairs, including financial affairs, free from government and other surveillance is a core American value.”

A desire for data. “While regulators may have a voracious appetite for data, that proclivity is obviously -- and fundamentally --incompatible with the kind of free society that has made America great,” Atkins said. “Since January, this administration has highlighted the importance of restoring power to individual Americans and entrusting them to manage their own affairs, including when it comes to crypto,” he said.

“For our part, the SEC must confront its own record in balancing investor protection and privacy,” Atkins said. “The Commission has established tools like the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), swap data repositories, and Form PF, that it asserted were necessary to protect investors, detect fraud, and safeguard our markets,” he added. “Unfortunately, the federal government’s insatiable desire for data has expanded these tools in ways that increasingly put the liberty of American investors at risk -- and saddle them with costs that too often provide little benefit because the government does not even use all of the information that is submitted.”

Taking it a step further, Commissioner Mark Uyeda told the group that the scale of individual personal data that can be gathered and aggregated “creates a tantalizing opportunity” for abuse, adding, “indiscriminate collection of vast amounts of personal data is inconsistent with a framework that values privacy and financial independence.”

Broker-free transactions “Crypto opens new possibilities for transactions without financial intermediaries that are central to our existing financial service, financial surveillance paradigm,” said SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce.

As crypto usage increases, the public and relevant government agencies need to rethink when and how financial transactions are surveilled, Peirce said.

“Tokenized securities transactions, for example, can occur without the intermediation of a broker,” she noted. “As our personal transactions become increasingly disintermediated, government will receive less information about those transactions from their traditional channels. On the other hand … the public blockchains on which many crypto transit transactions take place are viewable by everyone,” she said.

GENIUS follow-up. The recently passed GENIUS Act, which regulates centralized stable coins, directs Treasury to identify innovative or novel methods, techniques or strategies that regulated financial institutions can use to detect illicit activity, such as money laundering involving digital assets, Peirce said. “That process is underway,” she said, a comment underpinned by the day’s roundtable panelists, many of whom represented companies that develop privacy-preserving technologies.

“The SEC does not endorse any particular product … but understanding how these technologies work will help inform policymakers as they seek to address the threats that face this nation without undermining our civil liberties,” Peirce said.

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