Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce says that after a terrible year, industry players need to remember what the point of cryptocurrency is.
In a speech at the Digital Assets at Duke conference, Peirce laid out some lessons to be learned from the problems the crypto industry faced last year. According to the commissioner, 2022 was a “terrible, horrible, not good, very bad year” for both the crypto space and regulators. However, Peirce believes that there are valuable lessons to be learned from the series of problems that have arisen in the past year. He explained:
“Underlying these lessons is the truth that technology takes time to develop and often must be combined with innovative developments in other fields to realize its full potential.”
Furthermore, the SEC commissioner stressed that the industry should always keep in mind that the point of the crypto industry is not to drive up prices and sell tokens to others. Peirce stressed that the industry must remember that the underlying technology is about “solving a trust problem” and how people can interact and transact with people they don’t know. He explained that:
“Traditionally, people have looked to centralized intermediaries or the government to solve this problem, but technology like cryptography, blockchain, and zero-knowledge proofs offer new solutions.”
Apart of this, The commissioner also urged “people who believe in the future of cryptocurrency” not to wait for regulators to fix problems, but to act to stamp out harmful practices and encourage good behavior within the industry.
Peirce also said that it is up to people in the industry to build the value of cryptocurrencies. “The value proposition of cryptocurrencies depends mainly on the creators of this technology, not on regulators like me, that we lack technical knowledge and we are watching from the periphery,” he said.
Last year was full of challenges for those who believe in this space. Despite the catastrophes, the sector has reaped some good achievements, such as its resilience in the face of market challenges, which somehow lays the foundation for a stronger future.
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