“To achieve President Trump’s goal of ensuring the United States is the crypto capital of the world, we are embracing innovation to bring more products to the land, creating clear rules for raising capital with crypto assets and providing clarity on how market participants can curate and facilitate the trading of tokenized securities online,” Atkins said in a statement Tuesday, mentioning his agency’s crypto program ahead of any other specific regulatory efforts.
While the process to advance a crypto market structure bill has dragged on in Congress, the SEC has been a bright spot for the industry’s regulatory hopes, even if the agency has at times moved more slowly than expected to issue policies. When Atkins discussed this upcoming settlement nearly four months ago, in mid-March, he said it would be proposed in the “coming weeks.”
The SEC’s busy new agenda calls for “crypto regulation” for July, although it is still under review at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Once proposed, it would be the first major crypto-specific regulation pursued under Atkins’ leadership. Although the regulator has established a wide range of staff statements and guidance on crypto, these positions lack the weight of a comprehensive rule, which cannot be changed as easily when future leaders come to the agency with different ideas.
