Paul Atkins chose those five words carefully: “a beginning, not an end.”
The SEC chair delivered that line Thursday in prepared remarks at the Practising Law Institute, framing the agency’s newly released interpretative notice on digital assets not as a final answer but as a first step. The notice, published Tuesday, concluded that most cryptocurrencies likely fall outside the definition of securities under federal law — a position that inverts years of enforcement practice under the previous administration.
Only one category survives the reclassification: traditional securities that have been tokenized. Everything else — digital commodities, digital tools, NFTs, stablecoins — sits outside the SEC‘s jurisdiction according to the interpretation.
Atkins described the shift explicitly as a departure from what he called the agency’s prior “regulation by enforcement” approach, signaling that interpretive guidance, not legal action, would now drive how the agency communicates boundaries to the industry. The interpretive notice followed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week, establishing a formal coordination channel between the two regulators.
But the interpretation is, by the chair’s own framing, temporary infrastructure. Congress is working on something more permanent — a market structure bill called the CLARITY Act, which passed the House of Representatives in July 2025. Atkins indicated the agency would defer to that legislation once enacted, treating the current interpretive work as a bridge between the old enforcement regime and whatever statutory framework ultimately emerges.
That bridge may need to hold for a while.
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As of Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee had not scheduled a markup of the bill. Progress has stalled largely over how stablecoin yield should be treated under law — a question with implications for both the crypto industry and traditional banking. The Senate Agriculture Committee passed its own version of the legislation in January, but reconciling the two chambers’ approaches has proven difficult.
Behind closed doors Thursday, Republican senators met with Patrick Witt, the White House’s crypto adviser, to discuss moving the legislation forward. A spokesperson for Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis confirmed the meeting took place and described it as “very productive and positive.” According to the senator’s team, lawmakers are “99% of the way there on stablecoin yield,” with negotiations on the broader digital asset portions of the bill described as being “in a good place.”
What that remaining one percent costs, and how long it takes to resolve, will determine whether the SEC‘s interpretation functions as a bridge or becomes the destination by default.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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