The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a custody framework on Oct. 1 that would let investment advisers and regulated funds hold crypto under rules written for it.
It is the latest of nine agency actions since Aug. 18 that span most of an asset’s life, from fundraising to safekeeping. Two came before the Senate rejected cloture on the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15, a 49-50 vote with 60 required, and seven came from Sept. 17 on.
Their legal status runs from live exemptions to pre-rule White House review, and that status determines what a crypto business can use today.
Raising money and defining the rules for crypto
The SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets proposal, issued Aug. 18 before the vote, would create an offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.
It includes exemptions for up to $5 million over four years and $75 million in a 12-month period, plus a conditional safe harbor from the investment-contract definition. It is a proposal with comments due Oct. 20.
On Sept. 25, SEC Corporation Finance staff published FAQs covering token functionality, decentralization, staking receipt tokens, marketing, continued network building, buybacks and secondary-market promoters, and updated them Sept. 28.
The SEC describes the FAQs as staff views that leave the law as written, and they give projects a detailed map of how staff approaches investment-contract analysis.
A Sept. 1 transfer-agent proposal, also issued before the vote, addresses electronic and blockchain-based recordkeeping and uncertificated securities. That rewrite of the shareholder-record layer beneath tokenized securities sits at the proposal stage.
Trading, routing and collateral
On Sept. 17, the SEC granted its Innovation Exemption, a five-year conditional exemption letting qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools.
Certain liquidity providers receive conditional dealer relief. It is a live exemption, temporary and limited to tokenized stocks on qualifying venues.
The same day, CFTC staff took a no-action position covering passive software providers that connect users to registered futures firms and markets. Wallets and interfaces get a clearer route into regulated derivatives when they meet the specified conditions.
As a staff position, the relief sits below a Commission rule or a statute in legal weight.
On Sept. 24, CFTC staff updated its crypto and blockchain FAQs to address customer-funded investments in tokenized forms of permitted investments and the use of blockchain technology for certain recordkeeping requirements.
Tokenization moves from the trade itself into the plumbing of regulated financial firms.
Clearing and custody for crypto
On Sept. 28, the CFTC registered Coinbase Clearing LLC as a derivatives clearing organization permitted to clear fully collateralized futures, options on futures and swaps. The registration covers that entity and those product types, and it shows regulated crypto-native infrastructure reaching the clearing layer.
The Oct. 1 SEC proposal would create a custom custody framework for registered investment advisers, registered investment companies and other regulated funds. It would permit self-custody in certain circumstances, recognize state trust companies as custodians for client and fund crypto assets, and give regulated funds access to a wider range of crypto-related strategies.
Chairman Paul Atkins described it as a compliant custody path where none existed before. Comments run 60 days from Federal Register publication, and every provision stays conditional until a final rule.
What works today, and the piece at the White House
Four pieces are usable now: the Innovation Exemption, the CFTC passive-software relief, the CFTC FAQ update for covered registrants, and Coinbase Clearing’s registration.
Regulation Crypto Assets, the transfer-agent proposal, and the custody proposal need final rules before anyone can rely on them, and the SEC FAQs interpret them. The last piece is the CFTC’s market framework.
That framework, a regulatory action titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,” went to White House review on Sept. 17. OIRA lists it as RIN 3038-AF80, a pre-rule received that day, so its contents are unpublished. It covers the market perimeter, the layer where the stack ends.
CLARITY would have allocated authority between the SEC and CFTC and set market-wide rules for secondary trading of digital commodities, a job that remains with Congress.
Agencies can issue exemptions, interpretations and registrations, and the March SEC and CFTC interpretation, an interpretive release, explained how securities laws apply to certain crypto assets.
The Innovation Exemption runs five years, and Atkins said Aug. 18 that legislation remained “indispensable” for rules that outlast a future regulator.
What the stack means for Bitcoin
Custody, adviser access, ETF flows, derivatives routing, collateral and clearing connect directly to Bitcoin, and the offering rules concern token issuers.
Bitcoin traded near $84,600, and Citi raised its 12-month forecast to $113,000 from $82,000, citing ETF inflows and gradual adviser and brokerage allocation growth.
CoinShares’ August survey found digital-asset allocations at 1.2%, the first increase since the October 2025 selloff, with regulation the top concern among invested respondents.
If the custody, transfer-agent, and offering proposals reach final rules that line up with the CFTC’s market framework, issuance, trading, collateral, clearing, and custody would run under one set of rules.
That alignment would support the adviser-and-brokerage allocation Citi describes, and it fits the upper range of Citi’s tokenization forecasts, which run from $2.7 trillion to $8.2 trillion by 2030.
If the proposals slow, draw litigation, or get rewritten, and the CFTC framework stays unpublished, firms could use the specific exemptions and no-action positions available today.
The market perimeter would rest on interpretation and staff positions. A future administration or a court ruling could narrow those pathways, which pulls outcomes toward the low end of Citi’s Bitcoin range.
In roughly six weeks, the agencies moved from how projects raise money to how regulated investors hold the assets. The statute that would fix the line between the SEC and CFTC remains open.
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