SEC safe‑harbor sent to White House

The Securities and Exchange Commission has moved its new crypto safe-harbor plan into the last bureaucratic room before a proposal becomes public. On April 6, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the package, which he calls “Regulation Crypto Assets,” is now at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, for review. He made the announcement during a fireside chat at Vanderbilt University’s Digital Assets and Emerging Technology Policy Summit in Nashville, an event the SEC itself listed on its public calendar. (sec.gov) (coindesk.com) That matters because OIRA review is usually the last stop before a proposed rule is published for notice and comment. The SEC’s own entry in the federal rulemaking agenda already shows a proposed rule called “Crypto Assets,” with the abstract saying the agency is considering exemptions and safe harbors to clarify how crypto offerings are regulated. That agenda entry also says the notice of proposed rulemaking was targeted for April 2026, which means Atkins’ remark was not just a vague promise. It was a signal that the agency is trying to hit its own clock. (reginfo.gov 1) (reginfo.gov 2) The proposal did not appear out of nowhere. On March 17, Atkins used a speech at the DC Blockchain Summit to sketch the framework in public and tie it directly to Commissioner Hester Peirce’s long-running safe-harbor idea. He said the rule would include an “investment contract safe harbor” for certain crypto assets and argued that the SEC should stop acting like every token is automatically a security forever. In the same speech, he said his version “traces its lineage” to Peirce’s 2020 proposal, which was later updated as “Token Safe Harbor Proposal 2.0.” (sec.gov 1) (sec.gov 2) The core idea is simple. A crypto project could raise money and build a network without immediately being forced into the full public-company style registration system, so long as it met conditions and kept making tailored disclosures. Peirce’s 2021 version gave developers a three-year grace period and required regular updates, public code access, and an eventual “exit report” explaining why the network had become functional or decentralized, or else announcing registration. Atkins has not yet published final rule text, so anyone claiming to know the exact thresholds in the SEC’s new version is guessing ahead of the document. (sec.gov) (github.com) What changed is not just the mechanics. It is the SEC’s whole posture. On the same day as Atkins’ March speech, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint interpretation saying most crypto assets are not themselves securities, creating a taxonomy that separates digital commodities, collectibles, tools, stablecoins, and digital securities. The agencies also said a non-security crypto asset can still be sold as part of an investment contract, but that status can end. That is a direct break from the agency’s older habit of leaving the industry to infer policy from enforcement cases. (sec.gov 1) (sec.gov 2) This safe harbor is also one piece of a bigger campaign. Since mid-2025, Atkins has been building what he calls “Project Crypto,” a broader push to rewrite SEC rules around issuance, trading, custody, and tokenization so crypto markets can operate inside a formal framework instead of around it. In July 2025 he said he had asked staff to propose purpose-built disclosures, exemptions, and safe harbors for initial coin offerings, airdrops, and network rewards. The White House review now suggests that one of those promises has finally turned into an actual rulemaking package. (sec.gov) (sec.gov) That does not mean the rule exists yet. OIRA can still send it back, and the public comment process has not started. But the sequence is now visible in official records: a March speech laying out the model, an April agenda entry showing a crypto rule due this month, and an April 6 statement from the chair saying the package is sitting with the White House. After years of crypto policy by lawsuit, the SEC is finally doing the slower thing it should have done first. (sec.gov) (reginfo.gov)