SEC refusal to allow exchange to list Winkelvoss ETP “Dampens Innovation,” according to SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce.

The SEC rejected a request to allow the BZX Exchange to list and trade shared of the Winkelvoss Bitcoin Trust, a Bitcoin based Exchange-Traded Product (ETP). In order to allow the exchange to list the ETP, the SEC would have had to approve a rule change. The SEC refused to do so, largely because they felt that the BZX Exchange did not have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent market manipulation.

In her dissent from the decision, Commissioner Hester Peirce laid out the flaws in the SEC’s reasoning, and shone a light on the challenge to innovation that this decision poses:

By suggesting that bitcoin, as a novel financial product based on a novel technology that is traded on a non-traditional market, cannot be the basis of an ETP, the Commission signals an aversion to innovation that may convince entrepreneurs that they should take their ingenuity to other sectors of our economy, or to foreign markets, where their talents will be welcomed with more enthusiasm.

To support her point, Peirce lists some of the many benefits that decentralized cryptocurrencies offer:

For example, trading in bitcoin is electronic, which facilitates competition and price transparency. Bitcoin are interchangeable, so that a purchaser is sure to get exactly the same thing no matter where she purchases it. In addition, bitcoin mining is not geographically limited (except to the extent it migrates to places with cheap electricity), so it is not subject to geopolitical threats that plague other commodity markets.

Peirce voices serious concerns about the discord between the SEC’s actions and its mission. She warns that with this decision, the SEC has positioned itself as the “gatekeeper of innovation,” which, in Peirce’s view, is a role that “securities regulators are ill-equipped to fill.” Peirce argues that investors in the cryptocurrency space tend to have far more sophisticated knowledge of the technology and should be left to decide for themselves whether they wish to invest. She concludes by asserting that the SEC has overstepped its boundaries and is acting in interests contrary to the ones it was founded to protect:

I reject the role of gatekeeper of innovation—a role very different from (and, indeed, inconsistent with) our mission of protecting investors, fostering capital formation, and facilitating fair, orderly, and efficient markets Accordingly, I dissent.