The US Securities and Exchange Commission is working to create an “innovation exemption” that would ease approval of digital-asset products by the end of the year, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said on Tuesday.
During an interview on Fox Business, Atkins told anchor Maria Bartiromo that the SEC is working on “rulemaking in the coming months.”
We’re looking for an innovation exemption — to try to get that in place by year end.”
An “innovation exemption” would function as a regulatory carve-out, giving crypto companies temporary relief from older securities rules to roll out new products under lighter oversight while the SEC develops tailored regulations.
Atkins addressed a question about the recent approval of the first multi-asset crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) in the United States. Launched on Friday, the product gives investors access to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA).
Grayscale's crypto fund launched under the SEC's recently announced generic listing standards, which reduce approval timelines for ETFs under Rule 6c-11.
According to Atkins, the new listing standards are “another example of how we can move forward. “It’s not just an ad hoc type of approach. We’re trying to give the marketplace some kind of stable platform upon which they can introduce new products.”
Atkins advocates for crypto innovation
Atkins, sworn in as chair in April, has been a vocal proponent of digital assets and innovation in the financial industry.
On July 31, he announced the launch of “Project Crypto” — an initiative aimed at modernizing the securities rules and regulations around crypto, and to help “enable America’s financial markets to move on-chain.”
In August, speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole, he told an audience that there are very few tokens that are securities, although “it depends on what’s the package around it and how that’s being sold.”
The statement was a sharp departure from his predecessor, Gary Gensler, who maintained that under the SEC’s application of the Howey test, most digital assets should be treated as securities.
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