On August 18, 2026, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a comprehensive new offering and disclosure regime for crypto asset securities entitled “Regulation Crypto Assets.” The proposed rules are specifically designed for the offer and sale of what the SEC terms “covered investment contracts,” which are investment contracts whose subject is a crypto asset that is not itself a security and that has no other asset as its subject.

Overview

Since the introduction of digital assets with Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous white paper on Bitcoin in 2008, federal regulators have struggled to calibrate an appropriate regulatory framework around the emerging asset class. Over time, the SEC has approached the regulation of…