US SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce will hit the road this fall, leading a 10-city tour as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new crypto outreach initiative. The regulator announced a roundtable series on Friday aimed at gathering feedback from industry stakeholders, developers and investors as the agency weighs future digital asset rules.

“The Crypto Task Force is acutely aware that any regulatory framework will have far-reaching effects, and we want to ensure that our outreach is as comprehensive as possible,” Peirce said in a statement.

The agency’s crypto task force is “particularly interested” in meeting with crypto startups less than two years old and with 10 or fewer employees. The roundtable discussions will take place between August and December.

Many of the 2025 roundtable discussions hosted by the SEC have featured input from crypto and traditional heavyweights like a16z Crypto and asset management companies BlackRock. In its previous roundtables, the crypto task force has discussed the regulation of crypto, custody, tokenization and decentralized finance.

Founded in 1934, the SEC oversees and enforces US securities laws. While the agency had an often antagonistic relationship with the crypto industry, its approach has shifted under the administration of President Donald Trump. Enforcement actions against high-profile firms such as Coinbase, Uniswap and Kraken have been dropped, and the agency is now signaling a willingness to engage in open dialogue with players.

It is unclear whether the SEC has conducted this type of outreach before or how much it will cost. The agency receives its budget through the congressional appropriations process. Cointelegraph reached out for comment but had not received a response at time of publication.

Related: Coinbase seeks SEC approval for ‘tokenized equities’ — Report

Trump’s crypto promises gain momentum

The SEC’s initiatives come months after Trump said he would make the US the “world capital of crypto.”

On July 18, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, a bill that regulates stablecoins and their issuers, a moment hailed as a win by the crypto industry. Meanwhile the CLARITY Act, a market structure bill, has passed the House of Representatives, while the Senate is considering legislation addressing similar crypto market structure issues.

Other government agencies are also following the Trump administration’s lead. In June, the Federal Reserve cut the “reputational risk” category critics say was used to debank crypto companies. The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has eased restrictions on how banks can engage with the crypto industry.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

The US Securities and Exchange Commission released the agenda for its upcoming roundtable, “DeFi and the American Spirit,” scheduled for June 9 at its Washington, D.C. headquarters.

Organized by the agency’s Crypto Task Force, the half-day event is the fifth in an ongoing series designed to explore regulatory approaches to digital assets. The latest session will focus specifically on the DeFi sector.

The roundtable will run for roughly four hours and begin with opening remarks from SEC officials, including Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce, who also leads the Task Force.

Atkins and Peirce have both previously emphasized the importance of crafting a regulatory environment that allows DeFi innovation to thrive without compromising investor protections.

Intersection of DeFi and US regulatory principles

The main discussion, titled “DeFi and the American Spirit,” will take place from 1:30 to 3:00 P.M. and will be moderated by former SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes.

The panel will bring together thought leaders from academia, legal circles, and the blockchain industry to examine how DeFi platforms reflect core American values such as autonomy, open participation, and market-driven innovation.

Topics are expected to include the potential for peer-to-peer protocols to operate without intermediaries, the challenges of regulating smart contracts, and the risks and benefits of decentralized governance.

The event is open to the public and will be live-streamed on the SEC’s website. While virtual attendance does not require registration, in-person attendees must register in advance.

Continuing effort toward Clarity

This roundtable is the latest in the SEC’s “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity,” a multi-part initiative launched in March 2025 to gather industry feedback and inform regulatory policy.

The series opened with a session on how and when digital assets qualify as securities, followed by discussions on regulating crypto trading platforms, custody of digital assets, and the tokenization of traditional financial instruments.

Each roundtable has brought together legal scholars, technologists, and financial professionals to examine how existing rules intersect with emerging blockchain models.

With DeFi challenging traditional regulatory assumptions, the upcoming roundtable is expected to be one of the most pivotal yet. It will explore whether DeFi can be meaningfully integrated into the American regulatory framework while preserving its core principles of openness and autonomy.

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Katherine Reilly assumed the role of Acting Inspector General at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 20, succeeding Deborah Jeffrey, who retired after over two years in the post.

Reilly, a veteran within the agency’s Office of Inspector General, previously served as Deputy Inspector General and Counsel and twice held the acting title during prior transitions.

Her tenure has been defined not by regulatory policymaking but by oversight, audit, and internal investigations into the agency’s ability to execute its mandate amid market complexity, including digital assets.

Reilly’s past performance on crypto

Under Reilly’s leadership, the SEC’s OIG has consistently flagged digital asset fraud as a top operational concern.

In the most recent “Inspector General’s Statement on the SEC’s Management and Performance Challenges” issued in October 2024, Reilly named crypto-related fraud among the agency’s four central obstacles.

The report cited FBI statistics showing retail investors lost $3.96 billion to crypto scams in 2023 alone, with elderly investors representing the most frequently targeted group. It noted that more investor complaints now involve digital assets than any other category submitted to the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy.

These tips, complaints, and referrals comprised approximately 18% of all incoming reports in the year covered, revealing the extent to which crypto-related activity continues to dominate investor protection issues.

Reilly’s approach focuses on resource sufficiency and internal vulnerabilities rather than the asset class’s classification or future. She has emphasized the strain on agency resources created by the parallel need to monitor fraud and oversee approved products such as spot Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded products (ETPs).

OIG warnings for digital assets

While the SEC expanded its regulatory scope in approving these instruments, the OIG has repeatedly warned that staffing, analytics, and cybersecurity have not kept pace. A prior memorandum issued in 2023 also noted that a statutory ban on SEC staff owning digital assets hindered the agency’s ability to recruit qualified candidates, creating internal constraints as the Commission contends with increasingly technical market structures.

However, this mandate is weakening as the new SEC Chair, Paul Atkins, holds crypto valued at over $6 million.

One high-profile episode involving digital assets drew particular attention during Reilly’s tenure. In January 2024, the SEC’s official X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised, producing a fake post announcing the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF.

The tweet, which circulated for only minutes, prompted an immediate $1,000 spike in Bitcoin’s price before it was deleted. Reilly’s office, in collaboration with the FBI, launched a joint investigation that ultimately led to an arrest. The same performance report cited the incident as a failure of basic cybersecurity hygiene, faulting the agency for not enabling multi-factor authentication for the account at the time.

Reilly’s reports, including those from earlier years, have repeatedly framed digital assets as a domain requiring rapid audit responsiveness, not interpretive judgment on securities law.

The 2021 through 2023 performance reviews listed emerging technologies, including crypto, as areas where the SEC struggled to keep pace operationally. This framing reflects the statutory role of the Inspector General, which is limited to internal oversight and efficiency review rather than policy formation or enforcement discretion.

Reilly’s position on digital assets

While Reilly has not publicly commented on Bitcoin or any specific digital asset in a personal capacity, the institutional posture of her office suggests a consistent view: digital assets are a growing market activity segment that exposes investors and the SEC to new types of operational risk.

Her reports do not advocate for or against the legitimacy of crypto markets, nor do they assess the appropriateness of the SEC’s legal theories involving token classification. Instead, they evaluate the Commission’s structural preparedness and resource allocation in the face of digital-market complexity.

As Acting Inspector General, Reilly is expected to continue audits focused on crypto-related fraud detection, internal control modernization, and cybersecurity improvements, particularly those related to agency communication protocols.

With continued attention to the balance between innovation oversight and operational risk, Reilly’s tenure matches the SEC’s new approach, grounded in institutional resilience rather than regulatory posturing.

Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment for his role in the Jan. 9, 2024, hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account. The convicted, along with co-conspirators, posted false news of the SEC approving the first Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund in the U.S.

In a press release on May 16, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Council Jr. will also be subjected to three years of supervised release, a form of parole.

The 26-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud in February. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in October last year.

What Council Jr. did

On Aug. 29, 2023, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale’s spot BTC ETF application without proper cause. The court’s decision meant that the SEC would review Grayscale’s application, which it had rejected several times.

The court win raised optimism, and the crypto industry was highly anticipating the SEC to approve the first spot Bitcoin ETF any day. Council Jr. and his accomplices took advantage of the market sentiment and announced a fake approval from the SEC’s genuine X account.

Court documents indicate that Council Jr. conspired to hack the SEC’s X official account and post fake news of spot BTC ETF approval to manipulate the price of BTC. His role was to carry out a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) swap, where a bad actor convinces the mobile carrier to port a victim’s phone number to a SIM card controlled by them.

According to the DOJ, Council Jr. used an ID card printer to produce fake IDs of victims, whose personal data was supplied to him by co-conspirators. He then used the fake IDs to gain access to the victim’s number to access the SEC’s X account and post the fake news. Council Jr. received payment in BTC for his role in the SEC’s X account hack.

The damage Council Jr. contributed to

Immediately after the posting of the fake news, the price of each BTC increased by more than $1,000. But after the SEC chair, Gary Gensler, acknowledged the hack and dismissed the message of hackers as fake, the BTC price crashed by over $2,000 per BTC, CryptoSlate data shows.

BTC price rose to $48,000 after the fake news was posted, but crashed to $45,000 after Gensler’s refutation. Around $50 billion was wiped off Bitcoin’s market capitalization in the 24 hours following the posting of the fake news. The price fluctuation also caused a total of $220 million in liquidations.

FBI Criminal Investigative Division Acting Assistant Director Darren Cox called hack “a calculated criminal act meant to deceive the public and manipulate financial markets.” He added:

“By spreading false information to influence the markets, Council [Jr.] attempted to erode public trust and exploit the financial system.”

Mentioned in this article

A 26-year-old man from Alabama has been sentenced to more than a year in prison for his role in a social media hack that briefly sent the price of bitcoin

soaring.

Eric Council Jr. of Huntsville pleaded guilty to charges tied to the January 2024 hack of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.

Posing as a telecom customer using a fraudulent ID, Council used a SIM-swap technique to hijack a phone number tied to the SEC’s account. His co-conspirators then used it to falsely post that the agency had approved spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), a long-awaited regulatory milestone.

Within minutes, the price of bitcoin surged by more than $1,000. It crashed soon after, losing more than $2,000 in value once the post was revealed as fake. The SEC did later that month approve the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs.

Authorities say Council was paid in bitcoin for his role. He will serve 14 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

Federal prosecutors called the attack a calculated attempt to manipulate financial markets. “The deliberate takeover of a federal agency’s official communications platform was a calculated criminal act meant to deceive the public and manipulate financial markets,” said Acting FBI Assistant Director Darren Cox. “By spreading false information to influence the markets, Council attempted to erode public trust and exploit the financial system”