SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, citing the SEC's handling of charges against cryptocurrency startup LBRY, said the agency showed a lack of clarity on why it filed lawsuits against some companies and not others.
The SEC first accused LBRY of selling unregistered securities in March 2021 and decided to litigate rather than settle. A judge later ruled that its token was subject to regulatory oversight and ordered LBRY to pay more than $100,000.
Peirce told an audience at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit on Thursday that the LBRY case was her “low point” as a commissioner.
"Enforcement is always a little haphazard to some extent because we as a committee can bring a lot of cases in many different areas and we have to pick and choose," Peirce said. "We have to make resource allocation decisions about where to spend our resources. Significant?"
"We are cherry-picking old cases, and there seems to be no pattern in many of the encryption cases we bring," Peirce later added.