SEC Shelves Crypto Rule Meeting Days After Senate Punted Clarity Act

The Securities and Exchange Commission has called off an open meeting scheduled for Friday morning at which its three commissioners were to vote on proposing the agency's first crypto-specific rules, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The formal notice, issued under the Sunshine Act and signed by SEC secretary Vanessa Countryman, records only that the meeting "has been cancelled," making no mention of a new date. A spokesperson separately told reporters the session would move to a later date "due to an unforeseen scheduling issue," without elaborating.

The commission had dated its original notice August 10, giving roughly three business days' warning, with a single item on the agenda.

The commissioners had been due to decide whether to publish for comment a set of exemptions letting crypto startups raise capital without complying with traditional securities offering rules, an escape hatch from registration that founders have sought for years. A vote would not have created anything binding, only opened a proposal to public comment, but it would have been the first time the agency attempted crypto-specific rulemaking rather than applying existing securities law.

The meeting had been announced on Monday, four days ahead rather than the customary week, and was widely read as the SEC moving to fill the gap left when the Senate departed on Saturday for a five-week recess without advancing the Clarity Act.

Both routes now stalled

That bill's next procedural test is not expected until September, and its prospects for this year are thin. Traders on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, put the chances of it being signed into law in 2026 at 20%.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins set out broad guidance towards the crypto industry in March, saying a safe harbor could cover startups worth up to $5 million experimenting with crypto in their first four years, entrepreneurs raising up to $75 million through investment contracts, and tokens whose creators have ceased all essential managerial efforts. A separate innovation exemption, still in progress, would let firms experiment with blockchain-based stocks and similar products without meeting every SEC disclosure requirement.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is still proceeding with its own event, an inaugural meeting of its Innovation Advisory Committee on August 20 whose agenda opens with a session titled "Crypto's Regulatory Evolution: From Uncertainty to Clarity" and goes on to cover artificial intelligence and prediction markets. It is advisory, and produces recommendations rather than rules.