Chair Paul Atkins announced the initiative in a statement today, calling crypto a “generational opportunity.”
Less than one year after the resignation of Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler, the new SEC leadership today announced a new initiative, dubbed “Project Crypto,” which aims to overhaul the traditional finance system with on-chain activations and DeFi integrations.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins released the statement today, July 31, praising DeFi & TradFi super-apps, “big beautiful software systems,” and crypto’s role in the evolution of capital markets. Chair Atkins went as far as to close his statement saying:
“This represents more than a regulatory shift — it is a generational opportunity.”
Chair Atkins said in his statement that Project Crypto is a “Commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move on-chain.” The SEC Chair referenced confusion around the application of securities law to crypto assets and past SEC regimes’ policies of regulation by enforcement.
The initiative is being launched with the help of pro-crypto SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, and is explicitly part of the Trump administration’s goal of making the United States known as the “crypto capital of the world” — a sentiment broadly echoed in an extensive set of crypto policy recommendations published yesterday by the White House’s digital assets working group.
Atkins continued in his statement saying “America must do more than just keep pace with the digital asset revolution. We must drive it.”
The announcement marks a major shift away from the previous administration’s hostility towards crypto, and DeFi in particular. The recent advancement of the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts, alongside Project Crypto, stand to prove that the Trump administration was doing more than just campaigning on crypto for voting and fundraising, which many skeptics believed.
Atkins went on to slam the previous administration’s “enforcement by crusade”, directly calling out “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” and vowing to re-shore crypto businesses that fled the U.S. over the last few years.
According to the statement, the commission’s next step is to develop a regulatory framework for “distributions of crypto assets” in the U.S., evidently meaning new crypto issuance, and to allow crypto securities to flourish in America. He went on to address tokenized stocks and commodities directly, saying that he has asked staff to work with companies seeking securities tokenization directly.
Source: https://thedefiant.io/news/markets/sec-launches-project-crypto-to-bring-all-markets-on-chain