SEC's Atkins Says Agency Pushing Toward 2025 Rules Allowing Crypto Firm Innovation

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is heading toward a year-end goal for its effort to get crypto firms pushing new products under the regulator's oversight, Chairman Paul Atkins said in a Tuesday interview on Fox Business.

The pro-digital assets rhetoric from Atkins is on-brand for his campaign to roll out friendly policies for the industry, aligned with orders from President Donald Trump. Both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said earlier this month that they're inviting existing registered firms to move forward on crypto activity and that they should just check in with any questions about how to proceed, and the SEC also posted a public agenda that reflected planned rules on the offer and sale of crypto securities, including exemptions and safe harbors.

"We're trying to give the marketplace some kind of stable platform upon which they can introduce new products," Atkins said. "We'll be doing rulemaking in the coming months. We're looking for an innovation exemption to try to get that in place by year end."

Though he suggested an end-of-year timeline, any rulemaking process has to pass through multiple stages that generally each takes months of time and requires public input.

Just last week, the agency moved to let exchanges list exchange-traded products (ETPs) holding spot commodities, including cryptocurrencies, without requiring the agency’s individual review each time — a generic listing standard that will reduce barriers for new products. The SEC has also been issuing staff policy statements to act as informal guidance on its crypto views, touching on diverse areas such as memecoins, mining and stablecoins. However, those topics would need formal rules approved by action at the commission level to get firm legal footing.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Congress — most specifically the Senate Banking Committee and Agriculture Committee — are working on the latest legislation to set guardrails around the U.S. crypto markets. Advocates of that bill, which is largely similar to the House of Representatives' Digital Asset Market Clarity Act that already passed with a wide bipartisan vote, are reportedly aiming for further committee action in late October.

"I'm looking forward to congress acting on this," Atkins said.While the legislation will clearly define the roles of the SEC and CFTC and the borders between crypto securities, commodities and other assets, Atkins has said since his first days running the agency that it can move forward on policy without Congress.

Read More: U.S. SEC's Atkins Posts Agency's Near-Term Agenda Jammed With Crypto Efforts