The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will decide Friday whether to formally propose Regulation Crypto, a rulemaking effort that could give token issuers their first codified way to sell digital assets without registering with the agency.
In a notice released Monday night, the SEC scheduled an open meeting for Aug. 14 at 10 a.m. ET. The agenda asks whether the commission should issue a proposing release to create a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.
Atkins puts the proposal at the center of his crypto agenda
SEC Chair Paul Atkins has made the rulemaking a central piece of his approach to crypto policy.
When he described the framework in April, after it had cleared White House review, Atkins signaled that it could include several paths. One would be a startup exemption allowing early projects to raise roughly $5 million over four years with lighter disclosure requirements. A second would cover offerings of up to about $75 million a year. He also pointed to a safe harbor that would remove a token from securities treatment once its team stops performing managerial duties.
A formal rule would carry more weight than staff statements
That staying power is what sets this apart from the SEC staff statements issued under Atkins on memecoins, stablecoins, staking, and wallet software. Those statements do not have the force of law, and a future chair could withdraw one quickly.
A finalized rule is different. It would bind successor commissions and require them to go through their own rulemaking process if they wanted to unwind it.
The vote starts the process, not the finish line
The timing stands out. The Senate left for its August recess without a floor vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which has remained on the Senate calendar since clearing the Banking Committee in May.
Friday’s vote would begin the rulemaking process rather than complete it. Once a proposal is issued, it opens a public comment period that typically runs for one to three months, and proposed rules often undergo revisions before adoption.
How Regulation Crypto fits with other federal crypto frameworks
Regulation Crypto would sit alongside the token taxonomy issued jointly by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in March. That framework sorted digital assets into categories and split oversight between the two agencies.
It would also sit beside the agency’s work on tokenized securities.