A Historic Day for Crypto Policy
The Breakdown
The Rewrite of the SEC's Market Structure Bill
The bill provides a transition period which Democrats claimed would act as a safe harbor protecting what they viewed as non-compliant crypto firms from the ongoing crackdown of the SEC. Republicans however argued that an additional $120 million in funding was recently earmarked for the agency and could allow them to embark on the necessary expansion. A later amendment draft caused some particular concerns around the definition of digital assets contained in the bill. This draft excluded stocks bonds and other traditional financial instruments from being defined as digital assets presumably to prevent regulatory arbitrage from tokenized stocks. It was fear that these broad exclusions could inadvertently capture some crypto native assets like Dow tokens and liquid staking derivatives.
