SEC Says Crypto Rules Are Just the First Block, Not the Whole Chain

In a speech that might just be the regulatory equivalent of a "we're sorry" airdrop, SEC Chair Paul Atkins told the Practising Law Institute on Thursday that the agency is finally shelving its tired "regulation by enforcement" strategy. This pivot comes hot on the heels of last week's memo of understanding with the CFTC, signaling the commission's first real attempt to explain how ancient securities laws apply to our shiny new digital toys.

Atkins framed the new interpretive notice as a "beginning, not an end," which in regulator-speak translates to "we're done firing warning shots and are now, maybe, reading the manual." The guidance, released Tuesday, delivers the earth-shattering news that most cryptocurrencies probably aren't securities—a revelation that only took a decade of legal ambiguity and billions in legal fees to confirm. The sole category still firmly in the SEC's sights? Tokenized traditional securities, because some things are so boring they transcend technological form.

He also took a regulatory Sharpie and drew a big circle around digital commodities, tools, NFTs, and stablecoins, declaring them generally outside the SEC's playground. (In a related, not-at-all-coincidental development, the SEC just let Nasdaq run a tokenized trading pilot—talk about timing.)

Over in the legislative circus, Congress is still slowly gnawing on a market-structure bill designed to give the CFTC some actual bicep definition. The CLARITY Act, which the House passed back in the ancient history of July 2025, is currently gathering dust, awaiting its turn on the Senate Banking Committee's eternally backlogged calendar.

The office of Wyoming's crypto-cowgirl, Senator Cynthia Lummis, confirmed that GOP senators met with White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt on Thursday to try and jump-start the bill. The Senate Agriculture Committee already passed its version in January, but fears over stablecoin yield—apparently the most dangerous concept in finance—have put the Banking Committee's version on ice. Lummis's team, ever the optimists, called the meeting "very productive and positive," claiming lawmakers are "99% of the way there on stablecoin yield" and that digital-asset talks are "in a good place," which is political code for "we haven't thrown chairs yet."

(For those who enjoy reading legal fine print as a form of masochism, check out the recent deep dive on DeFi developer liability.)