- The SEC and CFTC drew the practical crypto oversight line through guidance, not legislation.
- A March interpretation now decides which regulator supervises which token.
- The CLARITY Act would lock that split into statute; its Senate delay leaves it reversible.
- Both agency chairs are aligned, so the framework depends on who runs the agencies next.
The turf war between the SEC and CFTC over who polices crypto is, for now, over, and Congress had little to do with ending it. The two agencies settled it themselves in March, through a joint interpretation that sorts tokens into five categories and hands the CFTC authority over the ones that trade like commodities, Bitcoin and Ethereum among them. The CLARITY Act would turn that settlement into law. With the bill stuck on the Senate calendar and unlikely to move before the August recess, the map governing a multi-trillion-dollar market rests on a document any future administration can rewrite without a vote.
How Atkins and Selig ended a decade of turf fighting without Congress
For most of crypto’s history the two agencies fought over the same tokens, and firms never knew which one, if either, would come after them. That ended fast in 2026. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins had launched Project Crypto in 2025 to modernize how securities law applies to digital assets, and on January 29 he and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig announced they would run it jointly. The personnel made the alignment tight. Selig helped build Project Crypto as chief counsel of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force before the Senate confirmed him to lead the CFTC in December 2025. So when the agencies signed a cooperation pact on March 11 and issued their joint interpretation six days later, the architect of the SEC’s approach was already running the agency it would empower.
What the March interpretation put in writing
Interpretive Release No. 33-11412 runs 68 pages and does what a decade of enforcement never managed: it draws a line. Four of its five categories sit outside SEC jurisdiction, leaving only digital securities under the agency’s full authority. The release names 16 assets as digital commodities, including XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink and Dogecoin, with Bitcoin already treated that way.
It also sets out how the agencies view staking, mining and airdrops, and it carries commission-level weight, so it binds enforcement staff rather than sitting as an optional view. Exchanges handling only commodity tokens now answer to the CFTC, and token teams in the four non-security buckets no longer assume the SEC will treat their launch as an unregistered offering.
The durability gap both chairmen have flagged themselves
The whole framework carries a catch. The release is an interpretation, the agencies explaining how they apply existing law. It is not rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and it is not a statute. Atkins and Selig said as much when they issued it, calling it a bridge while Congress works on legislation. They have argued that a law would anchor the rules and cut the risk of reversals when administrations change, and Selig has pointed to the Shad-Johnson Accord, the historic CFTC-SEC settlement that held only once Congress wrote it into law.
An interpretation issued by one set of commissioners can be narrowed or withdrawn by the next, and a court reviewing a classification dispute gives it less deference than a clear statute. The agencies are careful to say the release clarifies existing authority rather than reallocating jurisdiction, which is accurate on paper and also the reason it can be undone, since a clarification withdrawn leaves the old ambiguity in place. For someone holding one of the 16 named tokens, the current commodity treatment, and the exchange access, custody options and tax posture that follow from it, rests on a stance a later Commission could revisit. The current calm reflects two aligned chairmen and a shared document.
The rulemakings that keep moving while the bill waits
The delay does not freeze the agencies. Both are working to convert the March détente into something sturdier through formal rulemaking, which sits above an interpretation even if it still falls short of a statute. The SEC’s 2026 agenda includes a package it calls Regulation Crypto, covering registration exemptions for token launches, a safe harbor for decentralizing teams, and custody and trading-venue rules.
Selig has a parallel CFTC list: when DeFi software providers must register, updated rules for leveraged spot trading, the status of perpetual futures, and a rulemaking for prediction-market contracts. Each fills a gap the interpretation left open, and each carries the same weakness, since guidance and rulemaking both flow from agency discretion that shifts with leadership. The statute the CLARITY Act would provide is the only instrument here that survives a change of administration intact. The first serious court challenge to a token’s classification is where the gap between an interpretation and a law stops being theoretical, and that fight can reach a courtroom well before the Senate schedules anything.