In the United States, a number of encryption policy moves have taken place this week. The White House has pushed Congress to proceed with the Clarity Act, the SEC has introduced new draft rules for encrypted financing, and the CTC has indicated that if legislation continues to be delayed, regulatory arrangements will be put in place in accordance with existing competencies.

The White House continues to push the bill.

Trump reportedly met with a number of encryption executives in the White House this week and asked Congress to push for the adoption of a more “fair” version of Clarity Act after its resumption next month. The bipartisan bill was seen as an important development in United States encrypted market structure legislation, but disagreements around ethical provisions have become the main current resistance.

It was mentioned that Trump considered that some of the ethical provisions were directed against him. After the meeting, participants were more optimistic about the future of the bill. In addition to the bill itself, the discussion covered employment in the United States, economic growth and how to attract encrypted businesses and entrepreneurs back to the mainland.

It is also known that the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, a16z partner Chris Dixon, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, and the Co-Executive Director of Kraken, Arjun Sethi, also held closed talks with Howard Lutnick, United States Minister of Commerce, prior to the public event.

CFTC said it would study its own rules.

At the first CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee meeting, the Chairman, Mike Selig, stated that promoting the adoption of the Clarity Act was a sound way to avoid the United States encryption industry from relapsing into tough law enforcement lines. He also named a large number of encrypted law enforcement operations under the former Chairman Gary Gensler of the SEC.

At the same time, however, Selig stated that if the Clarity Act continued to stagnate owing to party resistance, the CTC would use existing statutory powers to begin to establish its own system of regulated markets for encrypted assets and stated that agency staff had been asked to study the relevant rules.

This means that even if parliamentary legislation continues to be delayed, federal regulators may advance more specific market arrangements. For industry, the dominant way in which future United States encryption regulation will take place may be between Congress legislation and institutional rules.

SEC proposes draft financing rules

At the same time, the SEC formally submitted a proposal for the Rules of the Republic of Cyprus. This was the first time that the agency had introduced a framework of rules specifically for the financing of encrypted assets, which was intended to provide a compliance path beyond a full registration process for partial issuance.

  • Total funding peaked at $5 million in four years
  • Or up to $75 million in annual financing
  • Safe harbours subject to conditions after management efforts have been completed

The proposal also envisages the exclusion of some cantonal securities registration requirements to reduce the complexity of cross-state issuance. It is worth noting that the proposal was not voted on in a public meeting, but was completed by separate votes of members.

The meeting cancelled the disagreement.

The proposal was scheduled to be considered last Friday in a public meeting, but the meeting was temporarily cancelled to refer only to “unforeseeable scheduling problems”. Previously, the media claimed that pressure from both the White House and Wall Street groups was related to the cancellation of the meeting.

Among them, the White House is concerned that the SEC could complicate the negotiations on Clarity Act by advancing the rule with another token innovation exemption. Some Wall Street agencies, for their part, believe that such more influential adjustments should be pursued through formal rule-making procedures and should not rely primarily on immunity arrangements.

Additional information:According to other media sources, there was confusion within the White House about whether the Commission was going to advance the Regulation Crypto Assets or a token innovation exemption, which also affected the scheduled meeting.