La exención de innovación de la SEC para la tokenización carece del poder de permanencia de la reglamentación

Paul Atkin's SEC is choosing a temporary exemption over a formal rulemaking to clear a path for tokenized securities, and that tradeoff means the policy won't have the same resilience against future administrations.

Why Exemptive Authority Instead of Rulemaking?

The SEC has the power to exempt activity from securities laws using its standing authority. Commissioner Hester Peirce confirmed to CoinDesk that the agency can do this without a full rulemaking: "It doesn't have to be done as a rulemaking."

Chairman Paul Atkins described the incoming policy in March as "an innovation exemption to facilitate limited trading of certain tokenized securities with an eye toward developing a long-term regulatory framework." He added that it would be "limited in time and scope, but long enough so that we can craft more durable rules."

But a full rulemaking requires at least 12 to 18 months, according to Patrick Daughtery, a former SEC lawyer now at Foley & Lardner. That process includes multiple rounds of public comment and revision. Once finished, a rule is also hard to undo - it takes its own long notice-and-comment process, as seen in the current SEC proposal to rescind Biden-era climate rules.

Exemptions are commission-level decisions with more heft than staff-level statements, but they are not the highest form of SEC authority. Thoreau Bartmann, a former co-chief counsel of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, noted that the agency may be punting because it lacks explicit rulemaking authority for crypto topics in existing law. "The exemptive route might actually make more sense for the commission, because it's basically saying you - crypto - don't have to follow these rules until we get some sort of durable grant of rulemaking authority," he said.

What Durability Looks Like - and What It Doesn't

Former SEC enforcement assistant regional director Charles Riely, now at Jenner & Block, summarized the goal: "The end goal is ultimately a statute or rule that provides certainty." The innovation exemption is a step, not the destination.

Riely pointed to a key resilience factor: "Given the increasing participation in digital asset markets, it will be very hard for a future administration to undo this work and bring cases where investor harm is absent." That's a practical barrier, not a legal one.

Still, the exemption is temporary and narrow. Unlike a full rulemaking, it lacks the procedural invulnerability that comes with a multi-stage public process. A future SEC chairman could reverse an exemption more quickly than a rule, though the political cost would rise if markets have already adapted.

What Comes Next

The crypto sector has been waiting years for permanent U.S. rules. Congress has not passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. So the SEC is building its own brand of crypto clarity piece by piece, using exemptions, memecoin guidance, mining definitions, and other staff-level positions.

Until Congress grants explicit rulemaking authority, the crypto sector will have to rely on these provisional guardrails and hope the next administration doesn't sweep them away.

Source: SEC's big swing to clear tokenization path isn't likely to get resilience of full rule
Domain: coindesk.com