More drama in Washington’s ongoing crypto policy debate unfolded Friday when the Securities and Exchange Commission abruptly canceled a meeting that would have kicked off the formal rulemaking process for a new framework governing crypto fundraising in the United States, known as Regulation Crypto Assets.
The meeting had been announced just three days earlier and was widely viewed as the securities regulator taking the initiative to lay the groundwork for clearer crypto rules while the industry’s marquee legislation, the Clarity Act, remains in limbo until lawmakers return from recess in mid-September.
An SEC spokesperson attributed the cancellation to an “unforeseen scheduling issue” but provided no further details.
Talk to enough people in crypto policy circles with their ears to the ground, however, and you’ll hear additional details involving the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and the White House.
First, some backstory: Over the past year, SIFMA, which represents many of Wall Street’s leading broker-dealers, investment banks and asset managers, has repeatedly pushed back against broad regulatory relief for crypto and tokenized securities firms. In a June 2025 letter, the group urged the SEC not to make major changes to the rules governing tokenized securities and other parts of the securities markets through no-action letters or exemptions. Instead, it called for a public notice-and-comment process, warning that broad relief could create regulatory arbitrage, weaken investor protections and fracture market liquidity.
The SEC’s Crypto Task Force has been working for months on an innovation exemption that could give crypto firms more flexibility to trade tokenized securities without being subject to all the same rules governing traditional Wall Street firms. Bloomberg reported that the agency was considering unveiling details last Friday, potentially alongside its proposed framework for crypto fundraising. Unlike the fundraising proposal, the innovation exemption would rely on the SEC’s existing exemptive authority rather than go through formal rulemaking.
Multiple industry sources who spoke with Crypto In America say the White House asked the SEC to postpone Friday’s meeting over concerns that Reg Crypto Assets and, separately, the innovation exemption could complicate Clarity Act negotiations ahead of the Senate’s procedural vote in September. The bill addresses both crypto fundraising and tokenized securities.
But there may be another layer to the story.
According to two sources familiar with the matter, SIFMA discussed the possibility of legal action if it determined that the SEC had exceeded its statutory authority under federal securities laws, including through exemptions or no-action relief. The prospect of a legal challenge may have contributed to the White House’s decision to ask the SEC to stand down and cancel the meeting, the sources said.
Asked about the discussions around a potential legal challenge, a SIFMA spokesperson declined to address them, saying: “SIFMA does not comment on specious or hypothetical theories. In this situation in particular, it would be premature to comment on something that currently doesn’t exist.”
The White House and the SEC did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this reporting.
It remains unclear whether the SEC will reschedule the meeting before the Senate returns next month.
In the meantime, the White House and crypto’s top regulators are expected to keep the policy conversation going this week, with separate events on Wednesday and Thursday.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig will attend a White House event Wednesday alongside executives from across crypto, prediction markets and traditional finance, where President Trump is expected to deliver remarks.
Industry leaders expected to attend include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi, a16z crypto Managing Partner Chris Dixon, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe, Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, Chainlink CEO Sergey Nazarov, Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher and Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman, among others.
On Thursday, Selig will host the inaugural meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, whose 43 members include several of the executives listed above. Futures Industry Association President and CEO Walt Lukken will chair the committee. The agenda includes crypto regulation, the growing roles of artificial intelligence and agentic finance, and, of course, prediction markets.
Meanwhile, lawmakers and their staff are expected to continue negotiating the Clarity Act’s unresolved issues ahead of a cloture vote scheduled for the afternoon of September 15. DeFi and developer protections, provisions in the Senate Agriculture Committee’s portion of the bill, and ethics rules for government officials all remain outstanding.
Negotiators will also have to contend with continued lobbying from the banking industry for changes to the bill’s stablecoin yield provisions. Despite that push, some of the country’s biggest bank CEOs still support seeing the broader legislation pass, including Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Citi CEO Jane Fraser.
“We have not given up on pushing to get some improvements made to the bill, but we would like to see a good bill go through,” Fraser told FOX Business in an interview last week. “I think it would be excellent for the system.”
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