Washington, DC – Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) President Paul Atkins said his agency launches “Project Crypto” with the aim of starting a quick start to the new cryptopolic policies called Donald Trump.
Atkins announced the new initiative in a Thursday speech at the America First Policy Institute, where he said the effort will be anchored in the recommendations of the President’s Working Group Report, which was issued Wednesday by the White House. He described it as “a commissioning initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move on the chain.”
“I have imposed commission staff to prepare clear and simple rules for the path of crypto -active
Distributions, custody and trade in public notice and comment, “said Atkins.” While Commission staff are working to end these rules, the Commission and its staff will consider in the coming months to use interpreting, exceptional and other authorities to ensure that archaic rules and regulations do not suffocate innovation and entrepreneurship in America. “
Crypto as securities
Atkins offered a rhetorical turn from the days when predecessor SEC chairman Gary Gensler said the vast majority of cryptocurrencies were probably securities to be monitored by the agency.
“Despite what SEC has said in the past, most crypto assets are not securities,” Atkins said. “But confusion over the use of the ‘Howey test’ has led to some innovators prophylactically treating all crypto assets as such.”
Even as Congress continues to work with complex legislation that will define crypto sofa papers under new law, Atkins suggested that his agency will move to start answering these questions now and working on “clear guidelines that market participants can use to determine if a crypto asset is a security or subject to an investment contract.”
Even when projects get a security label, he argued that it should not be a “scarlet letter.”
For Crypto Securities, he said he “has asked the staff to suggest detection passing information, exceptions and secure ports, including for so -called ‘initial coin offers’, ‘AirDrops’ and network payments.”
Atkins underlined Trump’s goal of establishing a “golden age” for digital assets in the United States
“We will revive the cryptic companies that fled our country, especially those who were paralyzed by the previous administration’s regulation for enforcement of crusade and ‘Operation Chokepoint 2.0’,” he said.
Read more: Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Age of Crypto’ takes shape with the White House Working Group Report
Self-Insurance, Super-Apps
The chairman, who began working this year after his appointment of President Trump, also argued for people’s self-insurance of crypto assets.
“I believe deeply in the right to use a self -defense digital wallet to maintain personal crypto assets and participate in activities on the chain like entering,” he said. “However, some investors will continue to rely on SEC registrants, such as brokers and investment advisers, to have assets on their behalf, and these companies are subject to further legislative requirements when they do.”
He also seemed to be pushing back on a routine criticism from Gensler, which cryptophy companies offered too many often conflicting services within a single business. Atkins said he means “allowing market participants to innovate with ‘Super-Apps”, which offers a ‘wide range of products and services under one roof with a single license.’
It will include giving more types of assets the opportunity to act on a single platform that offers:
“A broker dealer with an alternative trading system must be able to offer trade in non-security crypto assets along with Crypto Asset Securities, traditional securities and other services such as Crypto Asset Stoting and Lending, without demanding fifty plus-state licenses or more federal licenses.”
While SEC under Gensler and his predecessors seized the land as the most important regulator and enforce in US crypto trade in recent years, the future supervisory structure considered by Congress would probably raise the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to a prominent role.
It is then possible that Atkins’ project crypto will be of less speed as the sister agency assumes some responsibility.
Atkins added a defense of software developers – a point of special interest in the week in which Tornado Cash’s developer, Roman Storm, was defended in a criminal trial.
Atkins argued for the importance of “protecting clean publishers of software code, drawing reasonable lines to distinguish intermediate and disinter-mediated activity and create rational and useful rules for the path of intermediaries seeking to operate on-chain software systems.”
Update (31 July 17:17 UTC): Adds more details from the speech.
