The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will hold a public roundtable on June 9, 2025, focused on decentralized finance (DeFi). The event, titled “DeFi and the American Spirit,” will take place at the SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., and will be livestreamed online.
This roundtable continues the agency’s “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity” series. The event will run from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM ET and is open to both in-person and virtual participants.
Top Officials and Experts Join the Discussion
SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins will attend alongside Commissioners Caroline A. Crenshaw, Mark T. Uyeda, and Hester M. Peirce. Former Commissioner Troy Paredes will serve as moderator for the panel discussions.
The list of speakers include:
- Jill Gunter, co-founder of Espresso Systems
- Omid Malekan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School
- Michael Mosier, co-founder of Arktouros PLLC
- Rebecca Rettig, Chief Legal Officer at Jito Labs
- Gabe Shapiro, General Counsel at MetaLeX
- Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center
- Erik Voorhees, CEO of Venice AI
- Kevin Werbach, professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
- Michael Jordan, co-founder of investment firm DBA
Agenda Focuses on Regulation and Innovation
The event will explore how DeFi technologies relate to American values, including freedom, openness, and innovation. Panelists will examine how decentralized systems function without central intermediaries and how existing regulatory frameworks apply to them.
They will also discuss the operation of peer-to-peer smart contracts, the challenges regulators face when enforcing securities laws in decentralized environments, and the legal risks connected to governance tokens and protocol control.
Another key topic will be how investor protection laws interact with the design of DeFi systems. According to the SEC, the roundtable is intended to collect input from industry experts and the public, rather than to introduce new rules.
Town Hall Session Invites Public Questions
After the panel discussion, the SEC will host a town hall session where audience members can ask questions. Online viewers can also submit questions by email during the live event. This public input segment is designed to give the SEC insight into how developers, legal experts, and users view the role of regulation in decentralized systems.
This event is the fifth in a series of SEC roundtables targeting different aspects of the crypto industry. Previous events covered token listings, custodial services, decentralized exchanges, and stablecoin risks.
The June 9 discussion comes amid rising pressure on regulators to clarify how U.S. laws apply to crypto. Lawmakers have introduced several bipartisan bills, including the FIT21 Act and the bipartisan Lummis-Gillibrand framework, both of which propose clearer lines between securities and commodities rules for digital assets.
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Some DeFi advocates have called for minimal regulation, arguing that open-source protocols operate without middlemen and don’t fit within current definitions of “securities issuers.” Meanwhile, critics argue that DeFi systems often involve centralized parties under the surface.
The presence of figures like Erik Voorhees and Peter Van Valkenburgh signals a likely debate between strict legal interpretation and permissionless innovation.
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