SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce used their ETHDenver 2026 remarks to outline the SEC’s evolving approach to crypto regulation, including a possible innovation exemption for tokenized securities, new guidance on investment contracts, and planned rulemaking on custody and transfer agent modernization. This post summarizes what they said and what it signals for crypto issuers, exchanges, broker-dealers, and blockchain developers.
Backbone confirmed. In a development that underscores the accelerating evolution of financial innovation policy, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael S. Selig has publicly articulated a significant shift in the agency’s posture on prediction markets — just days after my commentary highlighted expectations for decisive leadership.
On January 28, 2026, staff from the SEC’s Divisions of Corporation Finance, Investment Management, and Trading and Markets published a joint statement aimed at one thing: forcing the market to be precise about what, exactly, is being “tokenized.” What follows is our practitioner’s read: the taxonomy, the legal consequences that flow from each branch, and a compliance checklist for anyone building in the space.
Fintech founders love referral programs for the same reason regulators are skeptical of them: incentives work.
If you are offering an interval fund direct-to-consumer (especially on a “self-distributed” model), a well-designed incentive program can become your most efficient acquisition channel. The wrong program, or the right program implemented the wrong way, can create problems fast: unregistered broker activity, improper compensated solicitation, and RIA Marketing Rule violations, often all at once.
This article is meant to help you spot the issues early, frame the choices, and understand why “just pay people for referrals” is not a clean concept in the securities world. It is not a blueprint you can copy-paste into your business. The details matter, and the compliance architecture matters even more.
On January 26, 2026, SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda delivered the Alan B. Levenson Keynote Address at the 53rd Annual Securities Regulation Institute in Coronado, California, laying out a clear theme for the Commission’s next phase of disclosure policy: tighten the focus on materiality, reduce low-value compliance load, and recalibrate requirements for smaller issuers. The speech is notable not just for its tone, but for its specificity. Uyeda does not speak in abstractions. He names the parts of Regulation S-K he thinks are ripe for revision and ties the policy direction to a broader institutional effort.
Braeden Anderson, Sr. was quoted in Bloomberg Law’s article, “Crypto, Prediction Market Chiefs Gain Sway as CFTC Advisers,” by Ben Miller, where he discussed the CFTC’s evolving approach to prediction markets: “The inclusion of prediction markets in the CFTC’s innovation architecture is a clear statement that the agency intends to treat event contracts as a legitimate market-structure category within its federal remit, not as a novelty to be tolerated until the states shut it down.” Anderson added, “I would not frame Selig as ‘pro-Kalshi’ in any cheerleading sense, but I also would not assume he will shy away from defending the CFTC’s institutional lane. Everyone is looking to Selig to provide backbone here.”
When an SEC exam request hits, some firms panic and start “Googling the exam” or relying on AI to decode what staff wants. That approach can backfire fast, leading to overproduction, credibility issues, privilege mistakes, and avoidable escalation risk. This article explains why AI is not a substitute for experienced SEC exam counsel, what exam staff is really testing, and how disciplined legal strategy can keep a routine examination from turning into a serious problem.
Excited to share that Securities Docket has released its Advisory Board for 2026, and I’m honored to be included among this year’s group of practitioners.
This case strikes at a fundamental tension in modern sports: the growing reach of legalized sports wagering colliding with the amateur status of college athletics. The charges underscore significant criminal and regulatory risks for athletes, institutions, and the broader collegiate ecosystem. Here is a legal analysis of the charges, defense considerations, and broader implications for stakeholders.
FINRA’s 2026 Oversight Report offers a clear preview of the examination and enforcement themes that will shape broker-dealer compliance in the year ahead. This piece distills the key risks, emerging priorities, and persistent problem areas firms should be addressing now.
I recently published an article in Law360 (linked below) that uses the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement with Virtu as a jumping-off point to think through a question MNPI doctrine has not fully confronted yet. The article is less about Virtu as a case study and more about using a familiar enforcement posture to explore how those same principles may apply as AI becomes embedded in trading, surveillance, and compliance functions.
On January 8, 2026, the SEC’s Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation released its annual staff report on capital-raising dynamics and delivered it to Congress. The report is not a policy document. It is a data compilation. But the data tells a clear story about how capital formation is functioning in practice.
Acknowledging the value of dissent does not require suspending scrutiny. It is fair, and necessary, to ask whether the SEC during the prior administration, and Crenshaw in particular, demonstrated sufficient command of the crypto markets they sought to regulate, and whether the agency’s approach over the past several years meaningfully advanced investor protection or instead imposed avoidable costs through uncertainty and inconsistency.
Law360 has published my latest analysis addressing the unresolved regulatory conflicts and market-structure risks now defining prediction markets.
The article explains why the most important legal questions are no longer just about preemption, but about how these markets are structured, who provides liquidity, and what regulators and plaintiffs are likely to focus on next.
Options trading has become widely accessible to retail investors, particularly through online and app-based brokerage platforms. That accessibility, however, operates within a regulatory framework that assigns specific responsibilities to broker-dealers while preserving customer autonomy in self-directed accounts. Many disputes in this area arise not from market outcomes, but from questions about how that framework functions in practice.
In this video we unpack how FINRA asserts its investigative authority beyond U.S. borders through Rule 8210. Cross-border business is common, and many foreign individuals and firms are surprised to learn they can still be pulled into a FINRA inquiry.
You can’t understand Nasdaq’s tokenization proposal by asking what it adds. You understand it by seeing what it refuses to change. Nasdaq’s tokenization rule filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is one of the most meaningful attempts yet to introduce blockchain-based representations of securities into the existing U.S. market structure.
In this video, we address the latest SEC “no-action” letter approving automatic voting for retail investors. The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance told ExxonMobil that its staff would not recommend enforcement if the company launched a program allowing retail shareholders to cast standing voting instructions.
In today’s video, embedded below, we will examine three critical regulatory filings that broker-dealer applicants and existing members must understand: Form BD, the New Member Application (NMA) under FINRA Rule 1013, and the Continuing Membership Application (CMA) under Rule 1017.
If your product accepts value from one person and moves it to another person or location, you may be a money transmitter. That status triggers federal MSB registration and, in most states, a money transmitter license. Read more…
In my recent YouTube video, I discuss how the SEC is beginning to align its custody framework for digital assets with industry practice. The SEC’s Division of Investment Management has issued a no-action letter confirming that certain state-chartered trust companies may serve as qualified custodians for digital assets and related cash equivalents under the Investment Advisers Act and the Investment Company Act.
The SEC Division of Trading and Markets updated its crypto FAQs on February 19, 2026 to add new net capital guidance for “payment stablecoins.” Specifically, the staff states it will not object if a broker-dealer treats a proprietary position in a qualifying payment stablecoin as having a “ready market” under Rule 15c3-1 and applies a 2% haircut to the market value of the greater of the long or short position.