Hester Peirce, commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said that – despite the terrible year – traders in the sector must remember what is the true purpose of cryptocurrencies.
In a keynote speech at the Digital Assets at Duke conference, Peirce laid out some lessons to be learned from the issues facing the cryptocurrency industry over the past year. According to the commissioner, 2022 was a year “terrible, horrible, bad” for both the industry and regulators. However, Peirce believes that the series of problems that emerged last year has led to valuable lessons. She illustrated:
“Under these lessons is the truth that technology takes time to develop and often must combine with innovative developments in other fields to realize its full potential.”
Furthermore, the SEC commissioner stressed that the industry must always keep in mind that cryptocurrencies are not for getting rich and offloading tokens to someone else, highlighting that the industry must remember that the underlying technology represents “the solution to a trust problem” and the way people can interact and make transactions with unknown people. He explained that:
“Traditionally, people have always turned to centralized intermediaries or the government to solve this problem, but technologies such as cryptography, blockchain and zero-knowledge proof offer new solutions.”
In addition to this, the commissioner also urged “people who believe in the future of cryptocurrencies” not to wait for regulators to fix the problems, but to take action to eliminate harmful practices and encourage the right approach within the sector.
Peirce finally said that it is up to people in the industry to develop the value of the tool. “The value proposition of crypto depends primarily on the developers of this technology, not on regulators like me, who have no technical skills and are at the window to observe”he recalled.
The past year has been full of challenges for those who believe in this industry. Despite the disasters, excellent results have been observed, such as the demonstration of resilience to market challenges which somehow lays the groundwork for a stronger foundation.
