SEC Chair Paul Atkins appeared to walk back a timeline for issuing sweeping crypto-related exemptions on Thursday, just days after Wall Street leaders met with agency officials to express concerns about the plan.
The exemptions would hand crypto companies a guarantee that activity in certain areas, such as tokenized securities and decentralized finance (or DeFi), would not trigger any enforcement action from the SEC.
But today, Atkins struck a different tune. When asked about the crypto exemptions and when they would be made final, Atkins declined to say they would be out by the end of this month, or even by next month.
“We’re still working on that, obviously,” Atkins said, speaking Thursday at a joint crypto-focused event with CFTC leadership. “We need to measure twice and cut once.”
“It would be nice to see direction from Congress,” Atkins said.
When asked by the moderator of today’s event, Eleanor Terrett of Crypto in America, whether Atkins now plans to wait for passage of the Senate’s crypto bill to roll out the innovation exemptions, the SEC chair said “not necessarily,” before adding: “There are a lot of moving parts to the situation.”
“Broad exemptions for tokenized trading activities could undermine investor protection and lead to market disruptions,” materials distributed at the meeting, prepared by SIFMA, read.
