1) Introduction
Significant changes have occurred in the United States’ regulatory environment regarding digital assets since January of 2025. Under President Trump’s administration, federal policy shifted decisively away from the enforcement-heavy approach that characterized the Biden era.
This new federal strategy is a complete rethinking of federal agencies’ treatment of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. It is no longer focused on using enforcement actions and restrictive guidance to shape the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries, but rather on enacting targeted legislation aimed at creating an environment that is welcoming to innovation in digital assets.
This article surveys the main recent regulatory developments, examining executive initiatives, Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) reforms, banking sector policy changes, the passage of the GENIUS Act establishing the first federal stablecoin framework, and emerging market structure legislation.
2) Executive Action and Policy Direction
On January 23, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” which created the foundational policy architecture for the administration’s digital asset policy.
The executive order revoked the prior Executive Order 14067, issued by the Biden administration, which emphasized the need for a thorough study of digital assets, as well as the exploration of a United States Central Bank Digital Currency (“CBDC”). President Trump’s order prohibited federal support for a CBDC, reflecting concerns about government surveillance, privacy implications, and potential displacement of private-sector innovation.
Additionally, the executive order created the “President‘s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets”. Under the leadership of David Sacks, the Working Group had a broad mandate to consider reforms in various areas related to digital assets. Its agenda included assessing potential stablecoin regulatory frameworks, evaluating the creation of a national cryptocurrency stockpile derived from seized assets, and developing recommendations for clearer jurisdictional delineation between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”).
The executive order reflected a strategic reorientation premised on several key assumptions. The Trump administration is seeking to place the United States in an international competition related to digital assets, with a belief that regulatory clarity is necessary to stop capital and talent flight to more permissive regimes.
3) Securities and Exchange Commission Reforms
a) The Crypto Task Force
On January 21, 2025, Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda launched the Crypto Task Force, which would be led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, who had always been an advocate of a more liberalized approach towards crypto assets.
The stated mission of the Crypto Task Force marked a significant shift from the enforcement-oriented approach of the previous Gensler administration. Instead of engaging in “regulation by enforcement”, the Crypto Task Force would instead focus on creating clear regulatory guidelines through notice-and-comment rulemaking.
One of the first major moves by the Crypto Task Force was rescinding Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (“SAB 121”), which required entities with crypto assets in custody on behalf of customers to recognize those assets as liabilities on their balance sheet. The rescission of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 via Staff Accounting Bulletin 122 (“SAB 122”) would open doors for banks and broker-dealers to enter the market.
Further, the SEC dropped major enforcement actions for sixty days.
b) The Ten Focus Areas
On February 4, 2025, the Crypto Task Force revealed its agenda, which comprises ten areas of concentration. These ten areas of concentration would be used to guide the task force’s activities and decisions.
The question of digital asset security status was prominently featured on the task force’s agenda. The task force promised to offer more clarity on the status of digital assets that fall within the purview of the SEC.
The question of defining the boundaries of the SEC’s jurisdiction was one of the key issues on the task force’s agenda. The issue of defining the boundaries of the SEC’s jurisdiction was informed by the task force’s perception of the SEC’s overreach and expansion of its mandate. The task force promised to offer clarity on the boundaries of the SEC’s jurisdiction.
Token relief mechanisms were also featured on the task force’s agenda. The task force considered the question of token relief mechanisms and the possibilities of a token moving from initial distributions to a decentralized system outside of the SEC’s ongoing jurisdiction.
The task force’s agenda also addressed the question of custody for broker-dealers. The question of developing comprehensive systems for traditional financial institutions to hold digital assets on behalf of their customers was informed by the rescission of SAB 122.
c) The Innovation Exemption
In December 2025, new SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced plans for an “innovation exemption” to be rolled out in early 2026. This mechanism would provide temporary regulatory relief for compliant on-chain products, creating a pathway for innovative offerings to reach market while regulators worked on permanent frameworks.
The innovation exemption sought to depart from the prior approach, under which new offerings faced enforcement risk absent explicit approval. By creating space for experimentation within defined parameters, the SEC sought to encourage domestic development of innovative solutions.
4) Banking Sector Reforms
The federal banking regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) and other regulators, began taking steps in early 2025 to stop “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” a Biden administration effort to limit cryptocurrency companies‘ access to banking through supervisory guidelines and informal directives. The FDIC, for instance, revoked guidelines that required banks to obtain approval before working with crypto-related businesses, instead issuing guidelines that allow such work provided it is done in an appropriate manner.
5) The GENIUS Act: A Federal Stablecoin Framework
One of the most impactful events of 2025 has been the passing of the GENIUS Act, which created the first-ever federal regulatory regime for payment stablecoins.
The GENIUS Act was introduced to the U.S. Senate on February 4, 2025, coinciding with the release of the SEC Crypto Task Force’s areas of focus. The act aimed to fill existing regulatory gaps regarding stablecoin issuance, reserve, audit, and regulatory requirements.
The U.S. Senate ratified the GENIUS Act on June 17, 2025, with a bipartisan vote of 68-30. The House ratified the act on July 17-18, 2025, with a vote of 308-122. President Trump signed the act into law soon thereafter.
a) Substantive Provisions
The GENIUS Act established a framework addressing the principal regulatory questions surrounding payment stablecoins. Issuers became subject to federal registration and oversight requirements, with clear standards governing who may issue stablecoins and under what conditions.
Reserve requirements mandated that stablecoin issuers maintain assets sufficient to honor redemptions, with specifications regarding eligible reserve assets and custody arrangements. Regular audit requirements ensured ongoing verification of reserve adequacy.
The Act modernized bank rules to facilitate stablecoin activities by regulated financial institutions, integrating the new asset class into existing frameworks. Critically, stablecoins became subject to standards analogous to those governing traditional financial assets, hoping to create regulatory parity that the industry had long sought.
Implementation timelines gave regulators until July 18, 2026, to issue implementing rules, creating a defined period for framework development while providing market participants with certainty about the regulatory trajectory.
6) Interagency Coordination and Market Structure
a) The SEC-CFTC Harmonization Statement
The jurisdictional boundary between the SEC and CFTC had long been a relevant question in cryptocurrency regulation. Tokens that might constitute securities fell under SEC jurisdiction; those that might constitute commodities came under CFTC oversight. But the criteria for distinguishing between these categories remained contested, creating uncertainty that complicated compliance planning and product development.
In September 2025, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint Harmonization Statement that represented a significant move in interagency coordination. The statement launched a cross-agency initiative designed to provide blockchain clarity, establish innovation exemptions available through either agency, and develop safe harbors for spot market activities and decentralized finance (“DeFi”) protocols.
The Harmonization Statement reflected recognition that the existing regulatory architecture – designed decades before blockchain technology existed – required adaptation rather than mere application. By committing to coordinated approaches, the agencies acknowledged that regulatory competition or inconsistency between them served neither investor protection nor innovation objectives.
b) Emerging Market Structure Legislation
Building on the executive, agency, and stablecoin developments, Congress turned in late 2025 and early 2026 to the broader question of market structure. On January 13, 2026, senators introduced legislation that built upon prior proposals including the CLARITY Act and the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (“FIT21”).
The market structure bill addressed questions that the GENIUS Act had not resolved. It proposed classification frameworks to determine when tokens constitute securities versus commodities, in an attempt to provide the clarity that market participants had sought for years.
Significantly, the bill would grant the CFTC explicit authority over cryptocurrency spot markets – a gap in the current framework under which the scope of CFTC’s jurisdiction extends only to derivatives markets absent fraud or manipulation. This expansion would bring spot trading platforms under comprehensive federal oversight for the first time.
The legislation also mandated joint SEC-CFTC rulemaking for areas of overlapping concern, institutionalizing the coordination reflected in the Harmonization Statement. Senate hearings commenced in January 2026, with the bill’s prospects enhanced by the bipartisan coalitions that had formed around the GENIUS Act.
7) Conclusion
The developments discussed in this article indicate a revolutionary shift in the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. The country witnessed a shift from an enforcement-based system to a novel and alternative system within a year to strengthen its position in the global cryptocurrency market.
The developments have presented market participants with opportunities and challenges. As frameworks stabilize, participants must develop compliance capabilities suited to the emerging regulatory architecture.
Thomas Werlen (thomaswerlen@quinnemanuel.swiss)
Nicolas Curchod (nicolascurchod@quinnemanuel.swiss)
Simon Weber (simonweber@quinnemanuel.swiss)