The legalization is based on a token's inclusion in a regulated financial product.
The draft text specifies that a token is considered non-ancillary—and not a security—"if, on January 1, 2026, any units of that network token were the principal asset of an exchange-traded product... listed and traded on a national securities exchange," the document read.
The immediate impact is on institutional access, not short-term speculation, experts told Decrypt.
“If this language survives into the final bill, the immediate impact would be less about prices and more about compliance posture,” Jordan Jefferson, Founder of DogeOS, told Decrypt. “A clearer statutory path out of classification uncertainty can widen the set of institutions that are even allowed to engage.”
The bill “reflects a broader shift toward regulating crypto assets based on how they are distributed and used within regulated financial products,” Jamie Elkaleh, CMO of Bitget Wallet, told Decrypt.
“Finalizing this bill with a ‘non‑ancillary’ label tied to ETFs would likely pull XRP, SOL, and DOGE into the same compliance comfort zone that unlocked institutional demand for BTC and ETH,” Joshua Chu, a lawyer and co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association, told Decrypt.
An electoral “wild card”He cautioned, however, that the “wild card is U.S. politics,” with the bill's fate tied to the upcoming mid-term elections.
The draft provides a clear blueprint for how Congress might begin drawing formal lines in the crypto regulatory sand, with ETF eligibility emerging as a definitive gateway to legitimacy.
Its first major test is imminent; the Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to debate and potentially amend the bill in a markup hearing this Thursday.
