The Securities and Exchange Commission has set a rulemaking agenda that shifts U.S. crypto oversight toward formal rules, outlining proposals on the offer and sale of digital assets, broker-dealer treatment, and the potential for crypto trading on national exchanges and alternative trading systems.
The agenda also includes plans to streamline disclosures and reduce compliance burdens tied to shareholder proposals, framing the pivot as part of a broader modernization of capital markets policy.
The agenda arrives alongside growing coordination with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
On Sept. 2, the agencies announced a joint initiative to issue guidance for the listing of leveraged, margined, or financed spot retail commodity transactions in digital assets, a step that targets points of friction around where and how retail spot activity is supervised. The coordination signals intent to narrow jurisdictional gaps that have complicated market structure questions for years.
For crypto market infrastructure, the SEC’s policy track has already affected exchange-traded products. On July 29, the Commission permitted in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETP shares, aligning bitcoin and ether products with the mechanics used by other commodity-based ETPs and removing a source of friction for authorized participants.
Per the SEC’s press release, in-kind processes now stand alongside prior cash-only mechanics, which had been a constraint on spreads and operational efficiency.
The enforcement backdrop has changed. Earlier this year, the SEC moved to dismiss its civil action against Coinbase through a joint stipulation, citing ongoing work by an internal crypto task force.
As the agency noted in its press release, the dismissal followed the creation of a unit focused on developing a comprehensive framework, and it arrived after two years of litigation that centered on whether several traded assets were unregistered securities.
In May, the Commission likewise dismissed, with prejudice, its case against Binance entities and founder Changpeng Zhao, closing one of the highest profile matters from the prior policy cycle (SEC).
Taken together, the agenda, the joint SEC-CFTC effort, and the ETP changes outline a pathway that reduces venue and product uncertainty even as final rules remain pending. Allowing crypto to trade on national exchanges and ATSs would move liquidity into environments governed by exchange surveillance programs, best-execution duties, and market-data regimes.
Broker-dealer guidance, if it addresses custody and net capital treatment with sufficient detail, would frame how intermediaries handle crypto alongside other securities. Per Reuters, the Commission is also weighing exemptions or safe harbors for certain offers and sales, a concept with antecedents in prior staff and commissioner statements, but now positioned for notice-and-comment rulemaking.
Disclosure changes could matter for public companies exposed to digital assets and for ETP sponsors. A rationalization of disclosures may tighten the link between risk factors and actual operational exposures, and a lighter burden for shareholder proposals could affect how crypto policy issues surface via proxy season.
These moves interact with the ETP in-kind decision, which market participants argue supports tighter spreads and more resilient primary-market flows in periods of stress, outcomes that tend to accompany commodity ETPs with in-kind mechanics.
Material questions remain. The proposed criteria for exchange listings of digital assets need to be comprehensive, and the division of supervisory responsibility between the SEC and CFTC for spot activity will need to be spelled out in binding text, not only in joint statements.
The Commission has emphasized that enforcement against fraud continues, meaning the pivot to rulemaking does not function as amnesty. The path from agenda to final rules involves proposal releases, comment periods, and votes, which introduces timing and scope risk even as the direction is clearer than a year ago.
The Commission’s framing, including statements by leadership about innovation, capital formation, and investor protection, indicates a model that uses established securities tools to govern digital assets without halting product development.
If the agency follows through with proposed rules that permit exchange and ATS trading, encode exemptions for certain offers and sales, and resolve broker-dealer questions, U.S. crypto market structure will look more like other regulated markets. The agenda, the coordination with the CFTC, the case dismissals, and the ETP decision form the basis of that transition.
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