The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Paul Atkins announced Project Crypto, a comprehensive initiative to modernise rules and turn the country into the “world’s crypto capital”.
The project follows directives from President Donald Trump and recommendations from the Digital Assets Working Group. According to Atkins, the SEC is shifting from “regulation by enforcement” to fostering conditions for innovation.
Clear rules for tokens
The central task is to set clear rules for cryptocurrencies. Atkins said most of them are not securities.
The Commission will draft guidance to help companies determine an asset’s status: security, digital commodity or collectible. This should put an end to the “theatre of decentralisation” and to the construction of complex offshore structures.
For financial instruments that are deemed securities, the SEC will create a tailored rulebook. It will govern ICOs, airdrops and staking rewards. The aim is to encourage issuers to consider US investors’ interests rather than sidestep them.
A new approach to custody and trading
Atkins called the right to self-custody of keys a core American value. For custodial services such as brokerages, the regulator will ease requirements. This will expand the number of firms allowed to hold clients’ crypto legally.
The Commission will also back the creation of “super-apps”. Under a single licence, platforms will be able to offer trading in securities and cryptoassets, as well as staking and lending services. That should lower regulatory burdens and intensify competition.
DeFi integration and a “sandbox”
The agency will update outdated rules to integrate on-chain systems into financial markets. The framework will create conditions for decentralised protocols such as automated market makers.
In addition, the SEC plans to launch an innovation “sandbox”. It will allow companies to bring to market new products that “do not fit existing frameworks” quickly. Instead of rigid prescriptions, they will follow general principles aimed at protecting investors.
Atkins stressed that “the US must not merely keep pace with the digital-assets revolution, but lead it”.
Spontaneous order versus regulatory overreach
The libertarian economist Yevgeny Romanenko believes the interests of the Commission and entrepreneurs are opposed. In a comment to ForkLog he explained this from the standpoint of the Austrian School of economics.
According to him, the best rules for a market niche form spontaneously, and the worst are imposed by regulators. The latter account only for officials’ interests, ignoring market participants.
“If an official has a hammer in his hand, every problem will look to him like a nail. The SEC’s arbitrariness in seeing a security where there is none has become a byword,” Romanenko said.
He recalled the “graveyard of crypto projects” caused by the agency and personally by its former head, Gary Gensler.
Romanenko noted that Atkins’s statement about cryptocurrencies is only his personal opinion, not the agency’s position. Regulatory uncertainty therefore remains.
According to the economist, calls for “clear rules of the game” do not come from those who want fair competition.
“They are demanded by those who dislike market rules. They expect to profit from proximity to the regulator and its ‘clearing the field’ of competitors,” he concluded.
A triumph of common sense?
In the view of Georgy Verbitsky, founder of the crypto-investor platform TYMIO, Project Crypto addresses the pressing problem of token classification. He noted that the absence of clear criteria creates a “grey zone” and slows the industry’s development.
As a reference point, Verbitsky suggested Michael Saylor’s model, which divides assets into four categories: digital tokens, securities, currencies and commodities. In his view, that logic would reduce regulatory uncertainty.
Commenting on the “decentralisation theatre”, he stressed the need to separate a token’s classification from a project’s architecture. Centralised and decentralised platforms require different, yet universal, regulatory rules.
Verbitsky called Atkins’s statement that most cryptocurrencies are not securities a “strong signal”. He believes this offers hope for a more constructive stance by US authorities, though uncertainty will persist until clear criteria are set.
The expert added that a move to regulatory “sandboxes” and a more accommodating integration of DeFi protocols would be a “powerful shift” for the industry. Such an approach would raise user and investor confidence by giving the industry clear rules and a safe environment for testing solutions.
“In essence, this is the start of the normalisation of crypto finance in the US,” Verbitsky concluded.
Regulation and the fight against scams
In the view of trader and Coen+ Telegram-channel author Vladimir Koen, the SEC head’s initiative to regulate the crypto industry will work in full only after the CLARITY Act is passed. He stressed that any Commission rules cannot take precedence over a federal law that applies in all states.
Koen believes Atkins is “truly” interested in separating digital assets. Those that are commodities will move under the oversight of the CFTC. The rest will remain under the SEC. He called this a positive step, noting that “some token characteristics do indeed fit the definition of securities”.
Koen suggested that regulators will introduce classifications for different types of assets. Separate rules may be created for NFTs, memecoins, yield-bearing assets and governance tokens.
The expert also touched on the “decentralisation theatre”. He noted that many projects, including those using Proof-of-Stake and most DAOs, are in fact not decentralised. In them, large tokenholders receive priority in voting and influence key decisions.
Adopting clear rules in the autumn will open the door to capital inflows and new projects in the US, the trader believes. In his view, certainty will give investors more confidence and stimulate industry growth, including from companies in Europe and Asia.
At the same time, Koen expects tighter oversight. He is confident regulators will actively fight abuses, impose hefty fines and forcibly shut down fraudulent projects.
“This is right, because there is too much scam in crypto. It is precisely because of the abundance of deception that we do not see a significant inflow of capital into altcoins. Investors are afraid, watching people constantly lose money,” he emphasised.
Koen expressed hope that DeFi protocols will not face excessive restrictions or complex tax obligations such as quarterly reporting, which could hamper their operations.
In his words, one of the main unresolved issues remains the introduction of KYC procedures. A requirement for mandatory registration of DeFi founders as legal entities would create additional risks for them.
The trader noted that the Securities and Exchange Commission moves slowly, but pressure from Trump could speed up the process. Koen expects regulatory clarity this year, leading to “a flourishing of cool decentralised projects in the DeFi sector”.
The White House Digital Assets Working Group has published recommendations on regulating the industry.