On Monday, Dec. 15, the Crypto Task Force of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission welcomed crypto entrepreneurs, investors, developers and enthusiasts to join its roundtable with law enforcers and decision-makers. Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI blockchain, explains why this was not a usual GR event for Web3.
SEC Crypto Task Force organizes roundtable, COTI's Shahaf Bar-Geffen explains why this is important
On Dec. 15, 2025, the U.S. SEC organized Privacy and Financial Surveillance Roundtable with its Crypto Task Force. Blockchain veteran Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI, indicates that this is a paradigm shift of Web3 privacy perception by lawmakers.
He stressed that not only was the agenda productive and important for the industry, but the manner of the conversation is not hostile any longer:
This week’s SEC Crypto Task Force roundtable represents a remarkable shift in tone, and it’s one that builders in the privacy sector have been waiting for. We’ve effectively moved from “Privacy bad” to “Privacy good”, which is the good faith position from which the conversation should always have started. To finally hear acknowledgement that financial privacy should be protected and not penalized validates the infrastructure we’re building.
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The roundtable has correctly identified that if the industry is not careful, it risks turning blockchain into a tool for mass monitoring rather than financial freedom. The solution, as policymakers are now finally grasping, is not to reject privacy technology but to steer it in the right direction.
As covered by U.Today previously, COTI is among the most trending privacy-centric blockchain ventures in the world.
Active in mainnet since May 2025, it already powered a couple of game-changing use cases for DeFi and beyond.
Toward new standards of programmable privacy
The segment is no longer limited to the binary choice of fully public or fully hidden. Privacy tech is not a switch; it is a spectrum of tools that enable confidentiality where it is appropriate and compliance where it is necessary.
Web3 should encourage regulators to engage with the technology deeply because the current crop of privacy protocols look and feel very different from those of the past.
Bar-Geffen also stressed that we are entering the era of programmable privacy, where individuals and enterprises can mask sensitive data while sharing certain information with third parties, be it for access or compliance purposes.
Q4, 2025, privacy coin rally put the entire sphere of untraceability-oriented solutions in the spotlight, U.Today reported previously.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team