'Crypto Mom' Hester Peirce to Step Down as SEC Commissioner

Hester Peirce, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner known as "Crypto Mom" for her strong support of the U.S. digital-asset industry, will formally step down next week.

Peirce's term ends on Oct. 2, according to a resignation letter she posted on X on Sept. 25. Since the start of President Donald Trump's administration, she has led the SEC's crypto task force, laying out definitions for key market issues including staking, mining and memecoins.

One of her biggest achievements was the "Innovation Exemption," a framework that opened the door to security tokenization, or ST. The measure created a five-year grace period to test the issuance and trading of tokenized securities before a permanent system is established.

Peirce consistently pushed back against the enforcement-driven approach taken under former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, a Republican, and former Chair Gary Gensler, a Democrat. After leaving the agency, she will join Regent University School of Law as an associate professor.

Peirce's departure will leave the commission with only two members: Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda. Under SEC rules, a two-member quorum is still enough for the agency to vote on agenda items and continue operations. Even so, a temporary slowdown in the pace of policy decisions appears difficult to avoid. The Trump White House has so far delayed nominating Democratic commissioners to both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.