The United States Securities and Exchange Commission was scheduled to move forward this week with a proposal for a significant rule for digital assets, but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute and the new meeting time has not yet been announced. This means that the long-awaited “Regulation Crypto” of the market is not yet in the formal proposal stage, and the United States encryption path is again delayed.
Temporary cancellation of meetings
The SEC had planned to present this rule at the Friday meeting. The agency speaker said that the meeting had been rescheduled to a later date because of “unforeseeable scheduling issues”, but no new dates had been given.
This rule is considered to be the first more structured rule-making exercise of the SEC in the field of digital assets. Previously, the market had been waiting for the regulatory authorities to move from a piecemeal approach to a formal rule-based process, including such steps as public consultation.
Rules targeting distribution arrangements
According to previously disclosed information, this so-called “Regulation Crypto” is expected to provide a more targeted set of arrangements for the issuance of some encrypted securities, so that the full registration requirement does not need to be triggered immediately when the relevant project is issued under certain conditions.
It was mentioned that the framework may also allow the projector to remain outside the current regulatory horizon of the SEC after a subsequent phasing out of project management. This is seen by industry as a transition programme linking early distribution and subsequent decentrization.
Legislation and supervision continue to pull saws
In the case of the United States Congress, there is still no clear progress on legislation related to the digital asset market. Some market participants had hoped that if the Senate failed to move the bill forward as soon as possible, the SEC could fill some of the gaps by establishing rules.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins had previously made this rule one of the priorities of his digital asset control scheme and described it as a customized distribution system applicable to specific investment contracts. Until the formal rules are in place, the SEC still relies mainly on a series of policy statements to explain its position on digital assets.
In addition to this rule, the market is concerned about whether the SEC will simultaneously advance the “innovation exemption” programme for securities monetization. According to reports, progress in this direction may also be delayed.