“We view this as the first of several rulemakings the SEC will undertake to provide regulatory certainty for crypto assets after the Senate failed before the August recess to advance the Clarity Act on crypto market structure,” TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a client note sent after the SEC's notice.
The proposal is expected to give a path to crypto firms enabling them to raise capital for projects without triggering SEC registration requirements, and the businesses are also expected to be provided an exit path for getting clear of the agency's jurisdiction when they're not engaged in hands-on management of the projects anymore.
Before this, Atkins and the agency had rolled through a lengthy series of crypto policy statements meant to clarify its regulatory position on digital assets, but the staff statements have little long-term durability. A formal rulemaking would be more difficult to reverse in the future.
But the rule will likely take further months to develop and finalize. This first stage will come with a comment period — typically two or three months — and be followed by a potentially lengthy rewrite.
Reg Crypto would join some of the other significant steps the agency has taken or is still working on to foster the U.S. crypto industry. One of the major moves was a joint stance with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on a “taxonomy” to define how they view various crypto assets and which jurisdictions they belong in. The agency is also still working on its tokenized securities approach, which Atkins routinely mentions as one of the SEC's marquee crypto maneuvers.