Episode 1: Commissioners Set the Course was released on April 16, 2026 available to watch here[i]

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins from SEC Headquarters in Washington DC: 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 is 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 [SEC] 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.

Mr. Atkins: Commissioner Uyeda, it is 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. So 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.

Mr. Uyeda: Well, I think it just seems like I grew up here. And it is 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 Form 3s, 4s and 5s under Section 16A) as well as the 10-Ks, and the 10-Qs.Form 10-K was much shorter at the time, back in the mid 90s. Then going on after that I went 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 in the past several decades. But do you remember when we first met, it was back in 2005?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: how do we have these smaller public companies access capital formation? You asked about things that influenced me: 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 of those things, and taking all those experiences, gives me a prism to think about what we are doing today.

Mr. Atkins: You served as Acting SEC Chairman from January to April of 2025. 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. Two part question: First, what was the impact on capital markets of, say, the last several years of Commission action? Second, how does that inform you and the most pressing priorities for the year ahead?

Mr. Uyeda: For over 30 years I’ve been a corporate and securities lawyer (with nearly 20 years here at the SEC).That has given me a pretty good baseline of what the SEC typically does, regardless of who is President. The last four years were a complete outlier to anything I’ve seen in that over three decades of time as a corporate and 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) more of a business conduct regulator—and even beyond that: we were going to 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, how you paid your executives. We are 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 or President Obama. But in the last four years, it was a complete deviation. And one has to wonder: why?Going back to when you were first here at the SEC 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 look at it, as nearly a twenty-year veteran of this agency, it was really important to get back to our normal course of action, how we have thought about things. I realize there can be different policy perspectives but you know this is, if we are playing a football game, are we going to position the ball more towards the left hash mark or the right hash mark? Unfortunately, the last four years we were not even in the stadium. We were outside. We were so far out of our lane. I’m thinking about getting us back to that core mission and making sure that we don’t forget that part of that mission is to facilitate capital formation.

Mr. Atkins: Speaking of capital formation, today we have about half the number of public companies we had thirty years ago. Why is that? How can we help make IPOs great again?[ii]

Mr. Uyeda: I’m a firm believer in both the public and the private markets. It is important that they coexist together and that they thrive together. One feeds off the other. We need to make sure that the IPO is used as a capital raising opportunity for a lot of companies. One of my big fears is that many times the IPO is now considered a liquidity event for employees and for early stage investors and venture capital funds, very important participants in the capital raising ecosystem. But one of the things we saw back in the 90s was a lot of companies using the public markets to raise capital. What that meant was that everyone, any person in the public, could invest in those companies. That is something often overlooked. When I look at the history of the SEC, one thing that does not get so much consideration is “diversification.” You can have the highest risk security in your portfolio, but if it is part of a broadly diversified set of positions, the overall effect on that portfolio is not that significant. In fact, in many cases it can present a superior risk return opportunity by having that diversity. 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 is certainly not for the SEC to tell investors: “no, you cannot invest in this opportunity for your own protection.” That is not our role.

Mr. Atkins: That is an important thing to remember. I agree with that. Maybe we can turn to the future. This is the 250th year since the Declaration of Independence. So we’re commemorating that throughout the country. The SEC is just past its 90th year in 2024 and looking forward towards the first 100 years in 2034.Where do you see the SEC today with respect to this history? And what else do we need to do to ensure that America has leadership in financial services in the years ahead?

Mr. Uyeda: I remember, when I was acting Chairman during that brief three-month period we had a series of Executive Orders that affected the agency. I remember my staff going through each of them. One of them was an Executive Order for how each agency thinks 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 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 from 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 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. 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 is always a competitor willing to try to knock you off. So that’s what I view our job 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.

Mr. Atkins: You never know!

Mr. Uyeda: Look where we came in the first 250 years. Looking forward to the next 250 years of what we can yet accomplish.

Mr. Atkins: It is a big task ahead of us. And so we have a lot of work to do here in the next few years. So, I am glad you are on board and 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.

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

Ms. Peirce: Mr. Chairman, it’s a delight to be here.

Mr. Atkins: Let’s get going. First, let’s discuss your background. You and I started working together back in the “aughts,” around 2003 or so I recall.

Ms. Peirce: 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 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. That was during the time when the financial crisis happened and Dodd-Frank was developed in response to that. After that I went to work in a think tank where I was able to think and write about regulation and financial regulation specifically. I 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 I wanted to think more about in an academic setting. So I did that and had the opportunity to come back as a Commissioner.

Mr. Atkins: Well, you did such a great job both here at the Commission and outside, especially at your think tank where you did a lot of work on the Dodd-Frank Act. Any particular issues that you think are still relevant from what you worked on now and that you’ve been able to address while you’ve been here over the past six years?

Ms. Peirce: Even more! So, I think 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 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 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.

Mr. Atkins: One area now that is really top on our list to try to get right is with respect to regulation of digital and crypto assets. You are the head of Crypto Task Force, now Project Crypto which is wonderful. You’ve done an excellent job, you have a lot to be proud of, to help change the direction of the SEC vis-à-vis that particular area of financial services. Maybe you could explain a little bit about what is crypto?[iii]And why is it so important for the continued strength of American capital markets?

Ms. Peirce: 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 is fit for purpose. Then we can 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 ensures that they serve people’s actual needs. And so, with respect to crypto specifically, crypto solves the double spending problem. You used to be able to send data over the internet, but you could not 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 new 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 are selling it in a way that is a securities transaction.[iv]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 to figure out how they can help them with these assets.

Mr. 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 on Zelle, or whatever, send it to someone else. So, what’s the difference with an on-chain sort of approach?

Ms. 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. That’s really powerful in our markets because sometimes intermediaries have been the source of problems. 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 are not necessary and building a framework that allows you to do some things in an automated fashion. Through the power of smart contract, you can program assets which is very powerful. You can build regulatory requirements right in or other kinds of restrictions. 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.

Mr. Atkins: Right. I completely agree with that. And the one interesting thing is that 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 of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which is very exciting and portends really close working relationship between the two agencies for the first time in decades.[v] 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?

Ms. 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 problems. So we are 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 we have a role to play where things are within our jurisdiction related to securities.And it is the same mission that we have with respect to anything else: protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, fostering fair, orderly, and efficient markets.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.Then the markets can develop in an orderly fashion.

Mr. Atkins: And a little bit with Congress as well. Obviously, they have a role as well.

Ms. Peirce: Yes. Absolutely. And they have to allocate authority between the two agencies.[vi]

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

Ms. Peirce: We do want to make this the place where people want to innovate--whether it’s in crypto or something else. 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 are willing to deal with those hard questions. We’re willing to work with people through those hard questions. 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 spend our enforcement where our regulatory resources could have done the job.[vii]So I think there is 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.

Mr. Atkins: Exactly. We need to future proof things, so we don’t have backsliding in the future. One thing that undergoes a lot of this though is investor education and that people know what they are investing in and have the tools to do that.And both of us have been very focused on this. Why is it so crucial to focus on investor education and can you speak to some of the efforts and initiatives that have been going on?

Ms. Peirce: Fraudsters are able to reach investors very easily these days.They are using all kinds of channels.They are 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 we see in the crypto space are very similar to problems that we’ve seen in other places.Empowering people to ask questions, to be skeptical, to say this looks too good to be true, to say that I do not need to make a decision today.If someone is 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.We see a lot of that going on now. One thing is to build that skepticism, but the second thing really is to meet people where they are; to meet people where they’re meeting scammers. We want them to meet us and 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 are managing their own money they are very comfortable and they are not scared to find the help they need and they’re not scared to ask the questions they need to ask.

Mr. Atkins: 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. Commissioner Peirce, thank you very much our time is up. Thank you for joining me today and looking forward to doing some more discussion in the future.

[i] This publication, produced and edited by Orical LLC, is a lightly edited transcript of a recent 30 minute podcast hosted by SEC Chairman Atkins and intended to be one of a series of podcasts. We recommend that the reader watch the podcast, if possible. We have added several links for further research.

[ii] See Chairman Atkins October 9, 2025 Keynote Address at the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance’s 25th Anniversary Gala.

[iii] For background on digital assets and smart contracts see Strengthening American Leadership In Digital Financial Technology.

[iv] See March 17, 2026 Press Release: SEC Clarifies the Application of Federal Securities Laws to Crypto Assets.

[v] See March 11, 2026 Press Release: SEC and CFTC Announce Historic Memorandum of Understanding Between Agencies. See also, March 17, 2026 Press Release SEC Clarifies the Application of Federal Securities Laws to Crypto Assets.

[vi] The United States Senate is working on a Digital Asset Market Clarity Act which, among other things, allocates authority between the SEC and the CFTC.See a recent update on that legislation.

[vii] See SEC Announces Enforcement Results for Fiscal Year 2025.