Project Crypto isn't just a tone shift — it's a sequenced regulatory overhaul. Here's what's actually being built and what's still missing.
SEC's Project Crypto — What Atkins Is Actually Building
Paul Atkins has been SEC Chair since April 2025, and in that time the agency's posture on crypto has changed more visibly than at any point in the last decade. What's less visible — and more important — is the specific architecture he's assembling underneath that posture change.
The centerpiece is Project Crypto, a Commission-wide initiative Atkins formally unveiled in his first months and has been building out in phases since. The most recent phase, outlined in a November 2025 address at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, laid out three concrete components: a formal token taxonomy, a refined application of the Howey investment-contract test, and a forthcoming Regulation Crypto proposal covering tailored disclosures, exemptions, and safe harbors for digital asset distributions.
The token taxonomy piece is philosophically significant. Atkins has stated plainly that most crypto tokens trading today are not securities — because they're based on investment contracts that have already expired. That's a direct break from how the Gensler-era SEC operated, which treated the security status of tokens as durable and presumed. Atkins is saying that status isn't permanent; it depends on whether an investment contract is still actively in effect. If the issuer is no longer making managerial promises that investors are relying on, the Howey test may no longer apply. That logic, if formalized in rulemaking, would change the compliance posture of hundreds of projects currently operating in legal gray zones.
The innovation exemption is the piece with the most immediate practical significance. Under this framework, companies would be able to test novel business models under principles-based safeguards — periodic SEC reporting in exchange for flexibility from full compliance requirements. Atkins described it as one of his top priorities and confirmed in a December CNBC appearance that the SEC was targeting a January 2026 rollout. The government shutdown delayed that. As of now, it's expected sometime in early Q1 2026.
What Atkins said about the prior era is worth noting separately from the policy details. He used the phrase "lost opportunity" to describe the last four years, described the enforcement-first approach as driving innovation offshore rather than building domestic capacity, and called the resulting ambiguity unfair to both market participants and investors. That kind of institutional self-criticism from a sitting chair is unusual. It signals not just a change in approach but a deliberate repudiation of the prior framework as a matter of record.
The GENIUS Act — the first major US federal crypto legislation, signed into law in July 2025 — established a stablecoin framework. The CLARITY Act, passed by the House in July, would divide jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC based on asset type. As of late 2025 it was still awaiting Senate action. Atkins has been careful to position his rulemaking as complementary to, not a replacement for, congressional legislation. Whether Congress moves fast enough to matter is one of the more consequential open questions in US crypto policy right now.
The regulatory reset is real. The framework is more developed than most people are tracking. What remains to be seen is whether the rulemaking pace, the congressional timeline, and the legal durability of staff guidance all hold together long enough to actually reshape market behavior.