“It doesn’t have to be done as a rulemaking,” said SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has led much of the agency’s crypto work since early last year. In response to a question from CoinDesk, he said the SEC has exempt authority that it routinely uses. “We can do it as a rule, but we don’t have to do it as a rule.”
In March, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the incoming policy as “an innovation waiver to facilitate limited trading in certain tokenized securities with an eye toward developing a long-term regulatory framework.” He said it would be “limited in time and scope, but long enough that we can craft more durable rules that take advantage of the full potential of these new technologies.”
More recently, in May, he added: “I also think we should consider what a future-proof framework might look like, which would take the form of notice-and-comment regulation and address the definition of ‘exchange’ as applied to on-chain trading systems.”
CoinDesk polled several attorneys who are former SEC officials, asking questions about the decision to postpone formal rulemaking and whether interim work on it will stand. Most agreed that the approach may not have the full force of the SEC’s authority, but it would still be difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube if the next administration sees things differently.
