SEC Plans Vote on New Crypto Investment Contract Rules as CLARITY Act Stalls

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Monday it will hold an open meeting this Friday, August 14, to consider proposing new rules that would create a tailored offering path for certain crypto investment contracts. The announcement lands just days after the Senate pushed its next procedural vote on the CLARITY Act to mid-September, leaving federal regulators to press ahead on their own while lawmakers work out what’s left of the bill’s disputes. What the SEC Is Weighing Friday’s vote only decides whether the agency issues a proposal, not whether it becomes law. Attorney Anne Kelley pointed out that a formal proposal would still need to clear a public comment period, economic analysis, possible revisions, and a separate final vote, a process that has typically taken major SEC rules somewhere between twelve and eighteen months from start to finish. Still, she called it “welcome progress,” noting the agency is choosing to act rather than sit and wait on Congress. In March, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint interpretation that set out a five-category token taxonomy and defined when a crypto investment contract begins and ends. And while the meeting notice did not mention the interpretation, crypto investor Mark Chadwick believes it will eventually lead to rules that would let projects sell tokens to buyers expecting profit from the team’s work without going through the full weight of IPO-style registration. Coinbase’s chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, wrote that the effort shows “the work of bringing clear rules to digital assets isn’t waiting on Congress.” Separately, the CFTC said its new Innovation Advisory Committee, with representatives from Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini, Polymarket, Kalshi, CME, and Nasdaq, holds its first meeting on August 20. The CLARITY Act’s Longer Road Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture early Saturday on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, setting up a procedural vote for September 15, the day after the chamber returns from recess. It’s a test of whether the bill can formally move forward, not a vote on its contents, and it still needs 60 votes to clear. Bill sponsor Cynthia Lummis didn’t hide her exasperation after the earlier delay, saying, “You all know me and how long and hard I’ve fought for this bill, so you know how frustrated I am.” Negotiators still have to sort out disagreements over the bill’s stablecoin yield language, an issue that resurfaced after banks pushed to change the wording, plus a bipartisan ethics agreement tied to Trump’s crypto holdings. The President told Punchbowl News he wasn’t against a blind trust but objected to being treated differently from other lawmakers. Michael Saylor, never one to stray from his usual talking point, said Bitcoin doesn’t need CLARITY even if the country does. Meanwhile, Grayscale has floated its own plan, arguing regulators can still tackle custody, tokenized securities, and trading rules on their own if Congress can’t get the bill done this year. The post SEC Plans Vote on New Crypto Investment Contract Rules as CLARITY Act Stalls appeared first on CryptoPotato.