SEC proposes ‘Regulation Crypto’ and opens 60-day comment window for token fundraising
Industry lawyers welcomed the shift to formal rulemaking, but still point to the Clarity Act as the durable fix.
The SEC has published a proposed “Regulation Crypto” rulemaking that lays out how token-based fundraising could be structured without violating U.S. securities rules. The proposal starts a 60-day public comment period that now becomes the market’s next information window.
SEC’s ‘Regulation Crypto’ Proposal Starts a 60-Day Clock for Token Fundraising Rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published its proposed “Regulation Crypto” rulemaking on Aug. 18 and opened a 60-day public comment period. The document frames a pathway for how crypto companies and developers can raise funds with tokens without running afoul of the SEC.
For traders, the immediate signal is procedural, not substantive. The SEC under the current presidential administration has leaned heavily on staff statements and has done relatively little formal rulemaking. A proposed rule is different. It is a binding-process attempt to define the lane, and that tends to compress the enforcement premium that sits on U.S.-exposed token launches.
The proposal itself is not a single one-size-fits-all regime. The SEC’s framework includes different provisions depending on how much funding a startup seeks to raise and how it will operate, per the proposal document. That design choice matters because it implies the agency is trying to bucket token fundraising into operating-model categories rather than treating every distribution as the same fact pattern.
The catch is timing. The SEC still has to digest comments, decide what to change, and then finalize. The packet does not specify how quickly a final rule could land or how long firms would have to comply after adoption. That gap is where the market will keep discounting certainty.
Clarity Act Pressure and a Parallel CFTC Track Keep the Policy Path Unsettled
Even supportive legal feedback is explicitly conditional. Lewis Cohen, a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, called the proposal “directionally super positive,” adding: “It goes a long way. It's directionally super positive, and no question the SEC is being commended for all the time, the effort, the energy that went into this,” while still arguing the Clarity Act is needed “to really get the job done right.”
That framing keeps legislative headlines as the larger catalyst risk. President Donald Trump urged Congress to pass the Clarity Act during a press conference last Wednesday that included SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Chair Mike Selig, alongside executives including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Kraken CEO Arjun Sethi.
The inter-agency posture is also drifting toward a two-track outcome. Selig said the CFTC was ready to begin working on crypto rulemaking if the Clarity Act does not become law. The press conference came a day before the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee met, putting a near-term venue on the calendar for process signals even if Congress stalls.
The next 60 days are the actionable window. The exact end date of the SEC’s comment period depends on the publication clock, but the sequencing is clear: early comment letters will likely target the proposal’s fundraising thresholds and its operating-model categories, because those are the levers that decide who qualifies for which compliance path.
Near-term legislative visibility looks thin. The policy tracker referenced in the packet noted no major U.S. hearings or meetings scheduled for the week of the Aug. 23 publication, which raises the odds that Clarity Act momentum shows up first as scheduling chatter rather than votes.
The other tell will be how the SEC characterizes its own intent. Follow-on statements from Atkins or SEC staff that clarify whether “Regulation Crypto” is meant to function like a safe-harbor-style launch pathway or primarily as a disclosure framework will change how issuers model U.S. access risk.
My Read: Rulemaking Is a Tradable De-Risking Signal, but the Timeline Is the Trade
The threshold that matters is not the proposal’s existence. It is whether the comment process produces a credible narrowing of the gray zone around token fundraising categories and thresholds. If the early letters converge on a small set of fixable issues, the setup starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven.
The real test is whether Washington collapses this into one rulebook. If the Clarity Act stalls and the CFTC proceeds with its own rulemaking posture, the market gets two agencies, two processes, and a longer uncertainty tail. That is the difference between a de-risking repricing and another round of jurisdictional basis risk.
