The SEC Division of Trading and Markets published a staff statement, telling certain wallet-linked crypto trading apps they can operate without a broker-dealer license – for now – as long as they function as neutral software and stay out of the business of actually moving your money.

The detail most headlines are missing, though, is that this exemption carries no legal force, expires in five years, and could evaporate entirely if Congress fails to act or a future SEC leadership decides to reverse course.

The market these rules address is already substantial. RWA.xyz currently shows $29.3 billion in distributed real-world assets, $13.4 billion in tokenized US Treasuries, and over $1 billion in tokenized public equities and ETFs. The…