Commissioners Set the Course: 2026 Priorities

The following transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and reach out to SEC staff with any questions.

<Intro Music and Highlight Reel> 

Commissioner Uyeda: When you look at the history of America, it is about opportunity. It is about free enterprise. So that's what I view our job as: making sure that we can still sustain that entrepreneurial spirit in this country. But in the last four years it was a complete deviation. 

Chairman Atkins: The one interesting thing is you know the President has often said that he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. 

Commissioner Peirce: We do want to make this the place where people want to innovate, whether it's in crypto or something else. If we can encourage people to build here our investors will benefit, our markets will benefit. 

Chairman Atkins: This is a very important inflection point in American markets. 

<Material Matters Logo> 

Chairman Atkins: I'm Paul Atkins, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking to you from our headquarters here in Washington D.C. The SEC’s mission has a profound impact on the American financial system and the businesses, market participants, investors, and innovators who make it the most dynamic market in the world. And yet for many people the SEC itself remains something of a mystery. 

I believe that it's time to change that. And that's why I'm excited to launch a new podcast here at the SEC which will feature exclusive and hopefully insightful conversations with policymakers from inside this building, leading experts outside it, and friends and colleagues who are as informed as they are engaging. For our very first episode, I couldn't think of a better place to start than right here at the SEC with two colleagues who help to drive our mission forward every day. I'm delighted to sit down with SEC Commissioners Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce, and I hope that you will enjoy both discussions.  

Commissioner Uyeda, it's great to be with you here today and to chat a little bit about SEC matters and your role here at the SEC and some of your background. 

So, you basically grew up here at the SEC which I'm proud to say that has created a really great colleague. From your journey from staff member to Commissioner, maybe you can describe some of the events that helped shape your outlook on your job and why you are doing your job here at the SEC. 

Commissioner Uyeda: Well, I think it just seems like I grew up here. And it's true. I've been here for nearly 20 years. But before that, I had a whole career for nearly 11 years in private practice and as a state securities regulator. And in that role as outside counsel to many publicly traded companies, having to deal with all their compliance requirements, including dealing with the corporate executives, their forms 3s, 4s, and 5s under section 16(a) and all of that good stuff, the 10-Ks, the 10-Qs. Form 10-K was much shorter at the time back in the mid-90s. And then going on after that to work for two and a half years as a state securities regulator, I think I'm one of the few SEC Commissioners coming here to the SEC after service as a state securities regulator or certainly in the past several decades. 

But do you remember when we first met? It was back in 2005, you know, I was the chief advisor to the California Corporations Commissioner, and you were the keynote speaker at the SEC’s annual Small Business Forum. And it was combined with a meeting of the then convened Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies. And that is something that has always really stuck with me is thinking about: how do we have these smaller public companies access capital formation? 

And you know, you asked about things that have really influenced me. You know during my time as a corporate securities lawyer I think of the dot com boom of the 1990s, I think of the accounting scandals of the early 2000s, Enron, HealthSouth, Global Crossing, and the like. Sarbanes-Oxley, the creation of PCAOB, the financial crisis, Dodd-Frank, but then the Jobs Act. So, all those things and taking all those experiences gives me a prism to think about what we're currently doing today. 

Chairman Atkins: So, you served as acting Chairman from January of last year, 2025, to last April. And so, you inherited an agency that had really diverted I would say from its core mandate. So, thank you very much for your leadership and helping get it back on track and dealing with some of the real outstanding issues that needed to be addressed. 

Let's maybe do a two-part question here. First, you know, what was the impact on capital markets of, say, the last several years of Commission action? And then second, you know, how does that inform you and the most pressing priorities for the year ahead? 

Commissioner Uyeda: Well, I think you know the nearly 30 years I've been a corporate securities lawyer, actually I should say over 30 years and then nearly 20 years here at the SEC, it's given me a pretty good baseline as to what the SEC typically does regardless of who is the President. I can tell you the last four years were a complete outlier to anything I've seen in that over three decades of time as a corporate securities lawyer. 

And it was unfortunate because I think we really went off track. We became instead of a regulator, with our tripartite mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation, to more of a business conduct regulator. And even beyond that. All of a sudden, we were going to somewhat micromanage whether you issued dividends or engaged in share repurchases, what your cybersecurity looked like, your supply chain management, human capital resources, the makeup of your employee workforce, DEI at the board level.

And not to mention, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental issues, resource extraction, your mine safety record, all of these things. How you paid your executives? We're supposed to be a disclosure agency and that is something that we have hewed to regardless of whether this was during the Clinton administration in the 90s, George W. Bush, President Obama. 

But in the last four years, it was a complete deviation. And one has to wonder: well, why? You know I think when going back to when you were first here as a commissioner, we were facing Sarbanes-Oxley and this big congressional mandate to take action. There was absolutely no such legislative mandate to undertake any of these things. 

So, the way I looked at it as someone who's nearly a 20-year veteran of this agency, it was really important to get back to our normal course of action how we have thought about things. You know I realize there can be different policy perspectives, but you know, if we're playing a football game, is the ball going to be positioned more towards the left hash mark or the right hash mark? 

You know unfortunately the last four years I think we weren't even in the stadium. We were outside. We were so far out of our lane. So, you know that's what I'm thinking about getting us back to that core mission and making sure that we don't forget that part of our that mission is to facilitate capital formation. 

Chairman Atkins: Speaking of capital formation, you know today we have about half the number of public companies as we had 30 years ago. So why is that? And how can we help make IPOs great again? 

Commissioner Uyeda: Yeah. Well, I'm a firm believer in both the public and the private markets. They need it [and] is so important that they coexist together. And they both can thrive together. One feeds off the other. What we need to do though, I think, is make sure that the IPO still is used as a capital raising opportunity for a lot of companies. 

One of my big fears is many times the IPO is now considered a liquidity event for employees and for early-stage investors and venture capital funds. Very, very important participants in the capital raising ecosystem. But one of the things that we saw were certainly back in the 90s was a lot of companies using the public markets to raise capital. 

What that meant is that everyone, any person, in the public could invest in those companies. And I think that's something that's often overlooked. And you know when I look at the history of the SEC, one thing that we perhaps don't take as much consideration [of] is diversification. You can have the highest risk security in your portfolio but if it's part of a broadly diversified set of positions the overall effect on that portfolio is not that significant. 

And in fact, in many cases it can present a superior risk return opportunity by having that diversity. And talking going back in time to the 1990s there were a lot of dot com companies that failed. But there were a number of them that succeeded. And it's certainly not for us, the SEC, to tell investors: No, you cannot invest in this opportunity for your own protection. That's not our role. 

Chairman Atkins: Yeah, well I think that's an important thing to remember. I agree with that. So, you know in the time we have left here maybe we can turn to the future. So, this is the 250th year since the Declaration of Independence. So, we're commemorating that throughout the country and the SEC when it was just past the 90th year of the SEC back here in 2024 and looking forward towards the first hundred years in 2034. So where do you see the SEC today, you know, with respect to this history? And what else do you think that we need to do to ensure that America's has leadership in the financial services in the years ahead? 

Commissioner Uyeda: I remember when I was the acting Chairman and during that brief three-month period, we had a series of Executive Orders that affected the agency. And I remember my staff going through each of them. And one of them was an Executive Order for how each agency [should] think about celebrating the 250th anniversary of this country's founding. And I said this is very important for the SEC. 

We weren't around during the early parts of this country's history. But when you look at the history of America, it is about opportunity. It is about free enterprise. It's about freedom. It's about the pursuit of happiness which in many ways I think is the ability to pursue a trade with minimal government interference. Now, there is an important role for government for things like safety and other issues. 

But it was not a society where you had to ask permission for the government to start a business or to engage in a trade. And if you look at the state of the world in 1776 where the United States was, vis-à-vis many countries in Europe, we weren't as advanced. But that freedom, that liberty creating those opportunities for people to pursue products, goods, and services for a profit, that is what helped instill this entrepreneurial spirit and that has propelled us so far beyond all of our other competitors, in 1776 to where we are today. But we have got to be very much on guard because of all the success America has had in terms of economic growth, innovation, new technology, that can breed complacency just like I'm sure many of the European countries who were much more advanced than the United States in 1776 thought that they were at the top of the world during their era. 

Well, there's always a competitor willing to try to knock you off. So that's what I view our job as, is making sure that we can still sustain that free enterprise spirit in this country. And if we can I can't wait to see what happens when we celebrate our 500-year anniversary. Of course I won't be around. 

Chairman Atkins: You never know. 

Commissioner Uyeda: But you know I think, look where we came in the first 250 years and looking forward to the next 250 years of what we can yet accomplish. 

Chairman Atkins: Yeah, it's a big task ahead of us. And so, we have you know a lot of work to do here ahead of us here in the next few years. So, I'm glad you're on board and you know, look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you very much Commissioner Uyeda, these are great observations. And a real challenge for us going forward. So, thank you very much for joining us today. And I'm sure the viewers will be very interested to hear what you have had to say and look forward to chatting with our other colleagues along the same lines. So, thank you very much for being here. 

Commissioner Uyeda: Well thanks for having me on your inaugural show. 

Chairman Atkins: Commissioner Peirce, I look forward to spending next few minutes with you discussing some of the salient issues here at the SEC and some of your background and all of that. 

Commissioner Peirce: Mr. Chairman, it's a delight to be here. 

Chairman Atkins: So super. Well alright so let's get going. And so first of all maybe we can discuss a little bit about your background here not just at the SEC but elsewhere. But you and I started working together back in the aughts. So around about 2003 or so I recall. And so maybe we can discuss some of that and your work elsewhere on the Hill and at other places. 

Commissioner Peirce: Yeah. Well, I came to your office from the division of Investment Management and had been an admirer of the way you thought about issues and was really honored to be able to work in your office and get a broader sense of what the Commission does. That led me pretty naturally to go work on the Hill and learn a little bit about the legislative process. 

And that was during the time when the financial crisis happened, and Dodd-Frank was developed in response to that. So, after that, I went off to work in a think tank and think and write about regulation, financial regulation specifically, and worked with a lot of economists in doing that. One of the emphases during the time in your office was cost-benefit analysis. And that was something that I wanted to think more about in an academic setting. So, I did that and then had the opportunity to come back as a commissioner. 

Chairman Atkins: Well, you did such a great job you know both here in the Commission and outside, and especially at your think tank where you did a lot of work on the Dodd-Frank Act and all that. Any particular issues that you think are still relevant from what you worked on now and that, you know, you've been able to address while you've been here over the last, you're now in your almost fifth year about to the sixth. 

Commissioner Peirce: And more, even more, so I think one of the things that, one of the lessons that anyone who was in the financial regulatory world and lived through the financial crisis comes to think about is what could we have done differently and what can we do to make sure that we don't contribute to a future crisis? And I do think regulation had a role to play. 

You can actually drive decision making with regulation in a bad way. And so, we want to avoid doing that. I think some of the response to the financial crisis was to sort of reactively try to pull more decision-making into the government and take it away from the private sector where incentives are really important. And so, I think what we can do as regulators is think about how we can return incentives to the financial sector to the private markets and make sure that the people who are making the decisions then bear the consequences of those decisions. 

Chairman Atkins: Yeah. Well, so, in one area now that is really top on our list to try to get right with respect to regulation is the whole digital asset area, crypto assets. So maybe and you are obviously the head of our Crypto Task Force, now Project Crypto, which is wonderful. You've done an excellent job, you have, I think, a lot to be proud of, to help change the direction of the SEC vis-a-vis that particular area of financial services. So, I was wondering maybe what you could do is explain a little bit about, you know, what is crypto? And why is it so important for continued strength of American capital markets? 

Commissioner Peirce: Well, I will tell you that it's a lot easier to do a good job on crypto in this environment where you're very supportive of us trying to get to a regulatory framework that's understandable, that's fit for purpose. And then we can, I think, better address the problems that come up in crypto but also really open up opportunities for people to innovate in this area. 

And that was really how I was looking at this issue from the get-go. We need to have financial regulation that is open to innovators because innovation is what makes the financial markets resilient. It's what's ensures that they serve people's actual needs. And so, I think with respect to crypto specifically, crypto solves the double spending problem. You used to be able to send data over the internet, but you couldn't send value because I could send you value and then I could send the same value to someone else and say: ‘Oh look, I paid you both.’ Cryptography solves that problem. It enables you to send money and say I'm sending it only to you and I can't send it to anyone else. 

And so, on top of that, there have been built a whole set of assets. And some of those fall within our space, either because you're tokenizing actual securities or because you're taking something that's a token and you're selling it in a way that is a securities transaction. And so, what we're trying to do now is build a framework for both of those things and also trying to help regulated entities that are serving their customers and clients figure out how they can help them with these assets. 

Chairman Atkins: So, what's the difference between online, on-chain payments versus otherwise? So now I can give my money to PayPal and then send it or Zelle or whatever send it to someone else. So, what's the difference with an on-chain sort of approach? 

Commissioner Peirce: The beauty of the technology is that it allows you to disintermediate so that peers can transact with one another directly or through the intermediation of technology. And that's really powerful in our markets because intermediaries have sometimes been the source of problems, right? Either they walk away with your money or they're careless with your money or your assets. 

And again, this is not to say that we're going to live in a world without intermediaries, but I think there's power in eliminating intermediaries where they're not necessary and building a framework that allows you to do some things in an automated fashion. You can, through the power of smart contracts, you can program assets, which is very powerful. 

You can build regulatory requirements right in or other kinds of restrictions you want to build in. You can programmatically say when collateral has to be paid out. So, things happen automatically. And so, there's real power to the ability to do those kinds of things very efficiently and automatically. Again, there will still be intermediaries, but their roles may change as this technology takes hold. 

Chairman Atkins: Right. Well, so I agree completely with that. And the one interesting thing is, you know, the President has often said that he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. And so, we've been working hard about that. And you got started before I got here, after inauguration, until I arrived in April. So, you built up, at that time, a really good Crypto Task Force. 

One of your recruits, Michael Selig, now has left us and now he's the chairman at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which I think is very exciting and you know portends really close working relationship between the two agencies for the first time in decades and decades. So anyway, I think that's a lot to look forward to. 

So, what do you think should be at the top of our list to address some of the risks that are inherent as we undertake rulemaking in this rapidly changing environment with respect to crypto assets? 

Commissioner Peirce: I think the cooperation itself is very helpful because we want to make sure that we're not spending resources to address the same problem. So, we're allocating responsibility. And I think that will help. Right now, there hasn't been a regulatory framework around the spot trading of crypto assets. And that's something that CFTC will be working on. 

But I think we have a role to play where things are within our jurisdiction related to securities. And it's just the same mission that we have with respect to anything else: protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, fostering fair, orderly, and efficient markets. And I think having the close cooperation with the CFTC ensures that we're monitoring markets which are very interrelated with one another and then thinking about where it makes sense for products to be regulated, who the primary regulators should be. And I think then the markets can develop in an orderly fashion. 

Chairman Atkins: And a little bit with Congress as well. I mean obviously they have a role. 

Commissioner Peirce: Yes, absolutely. And they have to allocate authority between the two agencies. Sure. 

Chairman Atkins: Yeah. So now this is a very important inflection point I think in the American markets. So, we have a lot of opportunities ahead of us. It really is a historic time. What do you think the opportunities are ahead? And is there any cost of maybe taking our time doing this? Is there urgency here? How do you look at the current situation? 

Commissioner Peirce: Well, I think we do want to make this the place where people want to innovate whether it's in crypto or something else. And in order to do that, we have to send the message to people that we will work with you when there are ambiguities about how the law applies to your particular facts and circumstances. And there have been a lot of ambiguities in connection with crypto which is a new technology that does things in new ways. 

And so, I think laying that framework will make people comfortable to innovate here, not only with respect to crypto, but with respect to other things because they realize that, at the SEC, we’re willing to deal with those hard questions. We're willing to work with people through those hard questions. And I think then, if we can encourage people to build here, our investors will benefit, our markets will benefit. 

Of course, we have to pay attention to difficult and terrible frauds. And we have to try to clamp down on those. But having a good regulatory structure in place is going to be helpful to us as well to identify where the bad activity is and to go after that bad activity and not to spend our enforcement resources where our regulatory resources could have done the job. 

So, I think there's a lot of promise. I'm very excited about what the possibilities are. And of course, we have to approach all of this carefully which is why we do want to work fast but we also want to work in a way that is principles-based and durable so that as the technology changes, it's able to keep up with those changes. 

Chairman Atkins: Exactly. We need to futureproof things so we don't have backsliding in the future. So then one thing that undergirds a lot of this though is investor education and that people know what they're investing in and have the tools to do that. And you know both of us have been very focused on this. 

So, you know, why is this so crucial to focus on investor ed and can you speak to some of the efforts and initiatives that have been going on? 

Commissioner Peirce: Yeah, I mean the fraudsters are really able to reach investors very easily these days. They're using all kinds of channels. They're very creative. And I think we need to be creative as well in reaching investors. I don't think the message has really changed. A lot of the problems that we see in the crypto space are very similar to problems that we've seen in other places. 

But it's giving people the... empowering them to ask questions, to be skeptical, to say this looks too good to be true; to say I don't need to make a decision today. If someone's pushing me to make a decision today, I can wait and think about it. There will always be other opportunities. Just to exercise skepticism when people are telling you to communicate with them in a channel that looks very informal. 

And we see a lot of that going on now. So, one thing is just to build that skepticism, but the second, really, is to meet people where they are. To meet people where they're meeting scammers. We want them to meet us, and we want to be able to direct them to our resources which can really arm them. 

And then of course I think we need to start financial education much younger in the United States. I want elementary school kids to be immersed in it so that by the time they're managing their own money they're very comfortable and they're not scared to find the help they need, and they're not scared to ask the questions they need to ask. 

Chairman Atkins: Yeah. Amen to that. So that's a charge that we have to push forward. And with as much effort as we can bring to bear. So anyway, Commissioner Peirce, thank you very much, our time is up, but thank you very much for joining me today and look forward to doing some more discussion in the future. 

Commissioner Peirce: Thank you. 

Chairman Atkins: Thank you.