U.S. regulators SEC and CFTC agreed to coordinate on a renewed regulatory framework for the crypto market, officials said.

Coordinated regulatory approach

The agencies announced joint work to build a unified rule set aiming to clarify legal status and oversight responsibilities across markets.

Officials said the effort targets consistent enforcement and regulatory guidance to reduce jurisdictional overlap and legal uncertainty for participants.

Unified token classification

A central element is a shared taxonomy dividing digital assets into clear categories to guide supervision and compliance standards.

• Digital commodities — assets treated primarily as goods rather than securities.
• Collectible assets — tokens representing unique or non-fungible items.
• Tokenized securities — digital representations of traditional investment contracts.

Innovation exemption and sandbox

The regulators are developing an innovation exemption to permit limited, supervised testing of products without offshore relocation requirements.

They also plan to launch a regulatory sandbox in the coming weeks to facilitate controlled trials under domestic oversight and consumer protections.

Tokenization and settlement improvements

Regulators expect broader tokenization and near-instant settlements to lower settlement risk and unlock liquidity across trading venues and custodians.

Authorities argue that faster finality and clearer rules could reduce systemic vulnerabilities while improving market efficiency for institutional participants.

Next steps

Agencies will coordinate technical consultations and publish further implementation details, with stakeholder engagement planned during the design phase.