In a May 8 speech, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency could consider a limited “innovation pathway” for on-chain trading systems in the near future.
Meanwhile, the agency will reserve formal notice-and-comment rulemaking to determine how crypto platforms fit inside the exchange definition. Atkins tied that idea directly to the SEC’s handling of electronic trading in the 1990s.
The SEC spent years issuing ad hoc no-action letters as electronic trading challenged the exchange framework, then built Regulation ATS in 1998. The rule was a middle path that allowed alternative trading systems to operate as broker-dealers under specific conditions as the market matured.
The original adopting release…
