SEC Chair Atkins: Innovation Exemption for On‑Chain Tokens Coming

Paul Atkins, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told attendees at Bitcoin Las Vegas 2026 on Monday that the agency will release an innovation exemption within weeks to allow firms to build and trade tokenized securities on distributed ledgers inside the United States. He said the SEC will also work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on joint guidance for tokens.

Atkins spoke in a sit-down interview with Perianne Boring, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. He described the agency’s earlier approach to digital assets as enforcement-driven and ineffective and said the SEC is shifting to policies that aim to enable on‑chain fundraising and trading. He pointed to a joint interpretive release with the CFTC that applied the 1946 Supreme Court Howey test to digital assets and drew a distinction between a token and the promises around it. “The investment contract wasn’t the orange itself, but the whole ecosystem of promises that Mr. Howey made to his investors,” he observed.

The SEC and CFTC issued token taxonomy guidance at the D.C. Blockchain Summit in April 2026 that listed tokens the SEC considers digital commodities. Atkins said that guidance has affected trading in Asian markets, where listed digital commodities have traded at price premiums. He described the taxonomy as principles-based and not a fixed list of approved tokens.

Atkins said the SEC is preparing a Reg Crypto framework to permit token sales onchain for fundraising. He credited the GENIUS Act, signed earlier this year, with recognizing stablecoins as a category of digital asset. Asked how durable the agency’s policy changes would be, he noted the limits of agency action and argued for statutory backing: “Nothing future‑proofs things like a statute.” He highlighted the pending Digital Asset Market Clarity Act as the legislative route to lock in reforms and noted that Senator Cynthia Lummis expects a full Senate vote by June 2026.

On tokenized equities and market infrastructure, Atkins highlighted distributed ledger technology’s potential to shorten settlement time and cut counterparty risk. He discussed T+0 settlement as a way to remove the time gap between transaction and clearance, saying, “Every second that you have a difference between the transaction time and the clearance and settlement is a risk that the investor and both parties bear.” He welcomed participation from incumbent exchanges and other traditional market participants.

Atkins’s appearance marked the first time a sitting SEC chair has spoken at the Bitcoin conference. His comments follow a period of increased regulatory coordination between the SEC and the CFTC as industry participants press for clearer rules on tokenized securities, stablecoins and on‑chain fundraising while addressing investor protection concerns.