Morning Minute: SEC Brings Clarity to Crypto

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are green with SOL leading; BTC +0.5% at $64.4k
• SEC proposes its first formal crypto rules with Regulation Crypto Assets
• Vlad Tenev posts “Tokenized Stocks in America,” calls on politicians to modernize securities rules
• Citi to introduce Bitcoin custody for its institutional clients
• Bitcoin ETFs see $487M in net inflows to start the week

🏛️ SEC Proposes First Formal Crypto Rules for Token Fundraising

For a decade, the SEC regulated crypto fundraising by lawsuit, suing token issuers one at a time without ever publishing rules explaining what legal looked like. Now that’s changing.

Yesterday the SEC introduced “Regulation Crypto Assets” as the agency’s first formal crypto rulemaking, and it creates two paths for selling tokens without registering with the SEC.

The smaller path allows a one-time raise of up to $5 million over four years. The larger allows up to $75 million in any 12-month period, a ceiling that mirrors Reg A+ Tier 2, the mini-IPO framework Congress built through the JOBS Act. Both require principles-based narrative disclosures closer to a whitepaper than a registration statement, and the $75 million tier adds financial statements and ongoing reporting. The rules would also preempt state registration requirements for exempt offerings and certain secondary trades.

There is also a very important safe harbor provision. Under the proposal, a qualifying token stops being subject to an investment contract once the issuer has completed or permanently ceased all the essential managerial efforts it promised. Chairman Paul Atkins traces the framework directly to the Token Safe Harbor that Commissioner Hester Peirce first proposed in February 2020, which the industry has been asking for ever since.

This is a remarkable shift from SECs of the past. The 2017 ICO boom died because the SEC decided token sales were unregistered securities offerings and started suing, and every team since has built around that ruling effectively ever since. We’ve seen Cayman and Swiss foundations, sales restricted to non-U.S. buyers, accredited-only rounds under Reg D, airdrops and points programs engineered to look like anything other than a sale. Those structures exist because there was no legal onshore option.

Now there are clear rules for token sales in the U.S. And if these proposed rules go through, expect an ICO wave to follow.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are green again with SOL leading; BTC +0.5% at $64.5k; ETH +1% at $1,920; SOL +2% at $77.40; HYPE -2% at $58.60
• Top alt movers include ZRO (+10%), GNO (+10%) and PUMP (+7%)
• Oil +1% at $85.80; Gold -1% at $4,420
• Stock futures are flat as oil continues to rise; DOW even, Nasdaq -0.2%
• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev called on US policymakers to modernize securities rules so tokenized stocks can trade domestically, noting Robinhood’s Stock Tokens reach 190-plus US equities in over 120 countries but remain unavailable to Americans
• BitBox shipped an emergency firmware update after frontier AI models helped its engineers find two severe BitBox02 flaws, with no evidence of exploitation and no funds lost
• Citi will launch Bitcoin custody later this year under its new Custody+ suite, letting institutional clients hold crypto and traditional securities in the same framework
• Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission migrated its FRNT stablecoin from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP after a security review
• Cypherpunk Technologies deployed the largest active Zcash mining fleet at about 18% of network hashrate, funded through a $33.33 million equity deal with Winklevoss Capital
• The FBI may have identified the first-wave attackers behind July’s Coldcard exploit, after Block’s investigation found the hackers’ onchain sweeps matched request patterns logged by a paid blockchain data provider

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were green; DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE +1%, PENGU +3%, TRUMP even, BONK +1%
• Robinhood chain saw some major rebounds with Stonkbroker +14%, PONS +10%, HMM +67% and AI +50%
• Solana leaders included Cyberleek (+23x), 67 (+50%) and Toad (+27%); Ansem falls another 10% to $240M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Kaito launched Pulse, a browser extension pulling users’ public Polymarket and Hyperliquid positions into the X timeline, paired with a new attention metric called Aura
• Mantle relaunched its site and is positioning itself as an open financial network for borderless access to global capital markets
• MoonPay added Cash App Pay as a payment method, letting eligible US customers buy crypto directly from their Cash App balance

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mixed; Punks +1% at 32.2 ETH, BAYC -1% at 7.9 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 3.78 ETH; Stonkbrokers -6% to 7 ETH
• Hypurrs (+16%) and Fuego (+20%) led top movers
• Rektguys introduced their new mint, minting on OpenSea on Friday at 12 pm ET for 0.02 ETH each