United States Securities and Commutation Committee Commissioner Hester Peirce, known colloquially equally "Crypto Mom," has slammed the SEC for its $10-1000000 settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex.

The SEC appear the $10-million settlement on Monday, with Poloniex being charged with facilitating trades in unregistered securities between July 2022 and November 2022.

The SEC asserted that Poloniex employees "stated internally" that they wanted to be "ambitious" in circumventing securities regulation in a bid to increase market share by listing new digital assets that may be deemed securities under the Howey Test of 1946. Poloniex elected to neither admit nor deny any wrongdoing.

On the same day, Peirce slammed the regulator's deportment in a public statement, emphasizing the opaque regulatory framework that crypto firms must navigate in the United States.

The commissioner highlighted several regulatory matters that the SEC has been criticized for failing to clarify with regards to digital asset businesses, including how to determine whether an asset is a security and what licenses and exemptions are appropriately required to operate a cryptocurrency exchange:

"Given how slow nosotros have been in determining how regulated entities can interact with crypto, market participants may understandably exist surprised to see united states of america come onto the scene at present with our enforcement guns blazing and contend that Poloniex was not registered or operating nether an exemption as it should take been."

Peirce added if Poloniex had tried to annals every bit a securities commutation or equally an culling trading organization with the SEC, the house "likely would accept waited...and waited...and waited some more."

Related: Crypto Mom: Truthful decentralization is the only thing that will save DeFi projects

USD coin (USDC) Stablecoin issuer Circumvolve acquired Poloniex for $400 million back in 2022. In October of the post-obit twelvemonth, Circle spun out Poloniex's exchange business, selling it to a consortium of investors.

In November 2022, Cointelegraph reported that Tron founder Justin Dominicus was among the investors who had acquired the exchange.