Crypto Is Losing Two Top Washington Voices as Mersinger and Peirce Set Their Exits

The CEO of the crypto industry’s Blockchain Association and the SEC commissioner who leads the agency’s Crypto Task Force both made their exit dates public on Friday.

Summer Mersinger will step down as CEO of the Blockchain Association on Oct. 16 and stay on as an advisor through the end of the year, the trade group announced. Kristin Smith, who joined as the group’s first hire in 2018 and ran it until 2025, will return as interim CEO on Oct. 17. Smith is currently president of the association’s board.

The same day, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce posted her resignation letter to President Trump, which sets her last day as Oct. 2. Her plan to leave was not new: Regent University’s law school said in May that she would join its faculty in November. Once she goes, the SEC will be down to two commissioners, Chairman Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda, according to the agency’s roster.

Both announcements came 10 days after the Senate blocked the Clarity Act, the market structure bill the industry had spent years pursuing. Neither announcement mentioned the bill.

Mersinger, a former CFTC commissioner, took the job in June 2025. The group credits her with steering its work on the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law President Trump signed in July 2025, and on regulatory steps such as the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation that most crypto assets are not themselves securities.

“I came here from the CFTC because I believed this industry deserved clear rules of the road and a credible, unified voice making the case for them in Washington,” Mersinger said in the release.

Peirce has been an SEC commissioner since 2018 and was picked to lead the agency’s Crypto Task Force. In her letter, she called giving people the freedom to choose within “sensible regulatory parameters” a “delicate and vitally important task for the regulator.”

Separately, stablecoin issuer Circle said Friday that CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen will step down by the end of December, after more than five years that included the company’s $1.2 billion IPO. Co-founder P. Sean Neville also resigned from Circle’s board, effective immediately, for personal reasons, the company said in a securities filing.

Related Listen: Crypto’s Clarity Act Collapses. Two Days Later, the SEC Introduces Its Innovation Exemption

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