Key dealers
- SEC prepares formal rules for regulating crypto markets and restructuring its digital assets strategy.
- Planning to integrate Finhub’s functions throughout the SEC and aims to promote innovation wider.
Sec-President Paul Atkins has urged the Commission to allow registered companies to store and trade securities and non-security, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, under a single, regulated structure.
Atkins believes that such a framework would streamline operations, reduce the cost of investors and accelerate the integration of digital assets into a federally monitored environment.
“I would like the Commission to allow Sec-Registrants to store and trade both securities and non-safety under one roof,” Atkins said under its Notes At the SEC SPEAKS conference on Monday.
“To enable this can reduce the cost of investors while allowing non-safety trading to enter into a regulated environment at federal level quickly,” he added.
Atkins also confirmed that SEC had begun to prepare formal rule suggestions to control crypto markets. He noted that while formal regulations are ongoing, the SEC staff still issues informal guidance to help clarify how existing laws apply to crypto.
“It is a new day of SEK. While I have directed the Commission’s staff over our policy departments to begin preparation rule proposals related to Crypto, the staff continues to” clear the brush “through statements at the staff,” said the Sec-chairman.
Atkins acknowledged that the agency’s previous regulatory approach had created uncertainty and described them as first taking a “head-in-the-sand strategy” before moving to “regulation through enforcement.”
Crypto market actors, he said, were often invited to “just come in and talk”, just to meet with moods. The new method aims to replace the ambiguity with structured commitment and clear rules.
The regulatory initiative is part of a broader institutional restoration under Atkin’s leadership. The agency is also seeking congressional approval to solve its strategic hub for innovation and financial technology (Finhub) and integrate its functions throughout the SEC.
According to Atkins, Finhub’s original assignment has been overshadowed, with many who now see it as a tool for enforcement rather than a platform that supports innovation.
“I will ensure that innovation will intervene in the culture, as it should be, and not focused on a small office,” Atkins said.
