SEC Commissioner Wants Crypto KYC With Less Data

What would the customer actually share?

Imagine that a crypto investment platform needs to establish three facts before accepting a customer:

The platform receives those answers without necessarily obtaining the customer’s passport, address or financial records.

That is the model SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce described in remarks at SIFMA’s Digital Assets Conference. She proposed using verifiable credentials and zero-knowledge proofs for identity, compliance and product-eligibility checks.

Her comments represent her personal position. They are not an SEC rule, proposal or exemption. The SEC also cannot independently rewrite the wider customer-identification framework established under the Bank Secrecy Act and administered by FinCEN and other regulators.

Where wo...