SEC Unveils Friendliest Crypto Rules Yet Amid White House Meeting

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed its friendliest set of crypto rules yet, and just hours later, President Donald Trump hosted a lunch meeting with top crypto executives at the White House. The SEC's proposal, called Regulation Crypto Assets, would create two registration exemptions for token issuers: one covering up to $5m in sales over four years, and another allowing up to $75m in any 12-month period, both based on narrative disclosures rather than the full securities regime.

The more significant aspect of the proposal is a conditional safe harbour. According to Paul Atkins, chair of the SEC, this would allow a token issuer to be exempt from being considered an investment contract once it has completed or permanently ceased all managerial efforts that it represented or promised under such a contract.

The rules also aim to pre-empt state registration requirements for qualifying offerings and certain secondary trades. The proposal builds on interpretive guidance issued by the SEC in March, which sketched similar logic but did not give issuers anything they could rely on in court. The SEC has invited comments on whether the thresholds are set at the right level.

The timing of the meeting between Trump and crypto executives is noteworthy, given that Trump's family businesses have reported roughly $1.4bn in crypto income from ventures such as World Liberty Financial and a memecoin whose investors lost billions while the family took fees.