Director SEC Hester Pearce's " crypto Mom" is backing technology that protects privacy.

What's going on?

Hester Peirce, the director of SEC , known in the industry as " crypto Mom", said that regulators should rethink how they monitor all new financial systems and push for less personal data instead of more.

She spoke last Wednesday at SIFMA's digital assets Conference in New York, focusing on digital authentication systems and decentralized networks with the original KYC (know-your-customer) and anti-counterfeiting rules.

The source of the news is Bitcoin Magazine by Mathew Di Salvo

What did she say?

"Today's society is divided", Peirce said, and described two pathways:

• The first is status quo: collect more data, allow providers to monitor users more closely and extend the KYC rule so that "the financial railroad becomes a panopticon".
• The other option is to use new technology "to catch criminals better, but with less personal information than ever before".

Her reasoning is that lawful customer databases to find criminals don't work: the bigger a database, the rarer it becomes, and the data collected everywhere increases the risk of leakage or misuse.

What's the technology she proposes? How does it work?

Peirce points to encryption tools such as zero-knowledge proofs and attribute-based credentials that can verify facts like age, qualified investor status or noncustodial accounting without revealing the underlying personal details.

Simply put: the bank or platform doesn't need to know who you are, how old you are and where you live.

She also pushed for SEC to allow the company to use identity checks done by other licensed institutions instead of requiring all companies to collect and store the same set of sensitive data repeatedly. This point is important for users in Thailand and Myanmar, because currently each platform (either Bitkub or its foreign affiliates) must keep a copy of every KYC 's account and information, with even more loopholes.

Why is this important now?

A series of events come to a head: the deaths of two people in an accident.

1. She's going to be out of office. ฤ Peirce is going to leave SEC in November, so this expression is a preposition.
2. SEC is speeding up crypto regulation. Under President Donald Trump, the agency changed its stance from Joe Biden's administration when former president Gary Gensler repeatedly sued major crypto companies for selling unregistered securities.
3. Peirce is the center of change. She was appointed to lead the crypto Task Force in 20132025 and is seen as a symbol of positive signals for the industry, though she has said that instead of being an optimist for crypto, she's a "freedom maximalist".
4. Major law enforcement agencies are stuck. The Clarity Act, intended to set clear rules for the industry, was suspended last week, leaving regulatory direction uncertain.

How does this affect users in Thailand?

The US rule KYC / AML has become a standard to which regulators around the world, including Thailand's the SEC (Thailand) , refer. If this idea of "keep less data but be more traceable" is translated into actual law, users of crypto-exchange platforms may not have to submit full versions of their personal information to multiple companies at once and the risk of leakage from central databases will decrease.

For users in Myanmar accessing digital assets to store value or receive transfers from abroad, the optional open-source authentication features required may reduce barriers to access services that currently require excessive documentation. But this is a global framework of thought; real change awaits the new SEC Commission after November and decisions by US legislators with the Clarity Act.