Hester Peirce delivers an impassioned defense of the right to financial privacy in a must-read speech entitled "Peanut Butter and Watermelon"

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s August 4, 2025 remarks at the Science of Blockchain Conference, titled “Peanut Butter & Watermelon: Financial Privacy in the Digital Age,” argued that the U.S. has allowed financial privacy to erode and that this trend has been driven in part by long-standing surveillance rules and the broad use of intermediaries in the financial system. In the speech, Peirce framed privacy as a core feature of a free society and suggested that newer technologies, including blockchain-based systems, can sometimes reduce reliance on centralized intermediaries and give users more control over what information they disclose. The speech matters because it places a prominent SEC commissioner’s voice behind a more skeptical view of the current financial surveillance regime, including the Bank Secrecy Act framework and related reporting expectations. Peirce’s broader point was that regulators should distinguish more carefully between suspicious activity and ordinary lawful financial behavior, and should be open to technological tools that preserve both compliance goals and civil liberties rather than defaulting to greater monitoring.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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