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The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission drew a line on March 17 that the crypto industry had been requesting for more than a decade. A 68-page joint interpretive release explicitly named 16 crypto assets as digital commodities — and therefore not securities — under federal law.
A sample list, stated directly in the document, is: Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Avalanche, Chainlink, Polkadot, Hedera, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Shiba Inu, Stellar, Tezos, and Aptos.
The release organises all crypto assets into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities.
The first three are not securities in and of themselves. A digital commodity is defined in the document as a crypto asset intrinsically linked to and deriving its value from the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system, as well as supply and demand dynamics, rather than from expectations of profit derived from the essential managerial efforts of others.
Three activities that had generated years of regulatory uncertainty are now addressed directly. Protocol mining — the computational work validators perform on proof-of-work networks — is classified as an administrative or ministerial activity, not a securities transaction. Protocol staking on proof-of-stake networks receives the same treatment across four staking models: solo staking, self-custodial staking with a third party, custodial arrangements, and liquid staking. Airdrops of non-security crypto assets to recipients who provide no money, goods, services, or other consideration in exchange are also outside securities law, because the first element of the Howey test — an investment of money — is simply not met.
The document is an interpretive release, not a statute. The agencies acknowledge this directly, describing the release as a first step and noting that it complements Congressional efforts to codify a comprehensive market structure framework into law.
That framework is the CLARITY Act, the digital asset market structure bill that would enshrine into statute the commodity versus security classification the SEC and CFTC just issued as interpretation. The bill passed the House in July 2025 and cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee in January 2026, but has not yet become law. The Senate Banking Committee markup remains the next required step.
The March 17 release did not arrive in isolation. Six days earlier, on March 11, the two agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a Joint Harmonization Initiative to coordinate oversight across policymaking, examination, and enforcement. The initiative is co-led by Robert Teply at the SEC and Meghan Tente at the CFTC. Its stated goals include clarifying product definitions through joint interpretations and rulemakings, reducing frictions for dually registered exchanges and intermediaries, and building a regulatory framework for crypto assets and emerging technologies.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins described decades of regulatory turf wars between the two agencies as having stifled innovation and pushed market participants offshore. CFTC Chair Michael Selig called the MOU the foundation for a harmonised framework that modernises oversight to match how markets actually operate.
Editor's note: We are committed to accuracy. If you spot an error, a missing detail, or have additional information about any of the companies or filings mentioned in this article, please email us at [email protected]. We will review and update promptly.
