Joint SEC and CFTC Interpretation: Five Categories of Crypto Assets, Effective the Day It Was Published

On March 23, 2026 a crypto asset document issued jointly by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was published in the Federal Register at citation 91 FR 13714, and the effective date printed in its DATES field is that same day. The two Commissions dated the document March 17, 2026, and in between, on March 20, 2026, it was filed with the Office of the Federal Register.

This article was verified on September 17, 2026 against the Federal Register full-text endpoint, the as-published PDF on govinfo from the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), CFTC press release 9198-26, and the Federal Register's own document data for this document. This site ran no hands-on test and offers neither investment nor legal advice; where the agencies wrote nothing, we say they wrote nothing, and we do not read "outside the scope of this release" as "therefore it is a security" or "therefore it may now be done".

Two agencies together, and it says it creates no new obligations

The AGENCY field of the document lists both agencies, and the signature block reads "By the Commissions. Dated: March 17, 2026." above the names of the two Commissions' secretaries: the two Commissions issued it and the secretaries attested it, so this is not an announcement the SEC made on its own. The SUMMARY field sets out the division of labor — the SEC makes the interpretation and the CFTC provides guidance relating to that interpretation — and states that "we" and "our" throughout the release refer only to the Commission, that is, the SEC.

The document type is the easiest thing to misread. The ACTION field reads "Final rule; interpretation; guidance" and the Federal Register records the document type as Rule, yet the text itself says the interpretation "does not itself create any new legal obligations", and states that it does not supersede or replace the Howey test, which is binding legal precedent. So this is not a new law; it is the agencies putting in writing how they read the law that already exists.

Three dates: dated, filed, published and effective

The date the document carries, March 17, 2026, also appears in the two interpretive-release tables the document adds to 17 CFR parts 231 and 241 — the date column for Release No. 33-11412 and for 34-105020 carries that day; the CFTC issued press release 9198-26 the same day, saying that it had joined the SEC "today" in issuing the interpretation. The filing date rests on the line at the end of the document, "[FR Doc. 2026-05635 Filed 3-20-26; 8:45 am]", and the publication date, March 23, 2026, is the effective date in the DATES field.

In its "Other Matters" section the release says that, pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has designated the interpretation a "major rule", but that the interpretation may take effect immediately pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 808(2) because it is an interpretive rule and thus exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act's notice and comment requirements; the document does not explain why the DATES field carries March 23. As for comments: the release solicits public comment on the views it sets out and says it may refine, revise or expand upon the interpretation in light of the feedback, but the DATES field carries only the one effective-date line, and the Federal Register's comment-deadline field for this document is empty as well.

Five categories, and what "not themselves securities" settles

The release classifies crypto assets into five categories based on their characteristics, uses and functions: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins and digital securities. It writes down the legal standing of each separately: the first three are not themselves securities; stablecoins are a broad category of crypto assets that may or may not be securities depending on their characteristics; digital securities are securities. It also states that a non-security crypto asset can still be offered and sold subject to an investment contract, and that the investment contract is itself a security.

The scheme comes with its own provisos. Because crypto assets differ from one another and the markets, including the underlying technology, continue to evolve, the release says there may be crypto assets that do not fall within any of these five categories, as well as crypto assets with hybrid characteristics that may fall within more than one category. Named examples appear under only three of the categories — digital commodities, digital collectibles and digital tools — each list opens with "include", so it is illustrative and not a complete list, and the release states plainly that its conclusions are based on the Commission's understanding of each asset's characteristics, terms and functions as of the date of the release. This article does not transcribe those names: in this document they are no more than illustrations of a legal classification.

The stablecoin passage carries a timing condition too. Section 17 of the GENIUS Act excludes from the definition of "security" any "payment stablecoin issued by a permitted payment stablecoin issuer", but the release says those crypto assets categorically will not be securities by operation of statute only after the effective date of the GENIUS Act, and that the Act was not yet effective when the release was issued: its effective date is a formula — the earlier of 18 months after its date of enactment, July 18, 2025, or 120 days after the date on which the primary Federal payment stablecoin regulators issue any final regulations implementing the Act. Until then, the basis is the Commission's interpretation applying the Howey test to Covered Stablecoins.

An investment contract can begin, and it can end

The release then asks when a crypto asset that is not itself a security becomes subject to an investment contract. Its answer: when an issuer offers it by inducing an investment of money in a common enterprise with representations or promises to undertake essential managerial efforts from which a purchaser would reasonably expect to derive profits. Whose words count is spelled out as well. Explicit representations or promises made by or on behalf of the issuer and conveyed to purchasers count; those made by third parties, such as unaffiliated proponents of the relevant crypto system or holders of the relevant crypto asset, do not, unless the representations or promises are authorized by the issuer and conveyed to purchasers; where the third party and the issuer collude to convey them, however, it would be reasonable for a purchaser to expect profits based on those explicit representations or promises.

Timing matters too: an issuer's post-sale representations or promises would not convert the prior sale into an offer or sale of an investment contract. In the other direction, the release sets out two non-exclusive indicia of separation — the issuer has fulfilled the essential managerial efforts it represented or promised, or a purchaser would no longer reasonably expect the issuer to be able to fulfill or to continue those efforts. Being subject to an investment contract does not transform the crypto asset itself into a security; and separation does not erase past liability, since an offering that was not registered and did not qualify for an available exemption still violated the Securities Act, and liability under the antifraud provisions remains.

The release also addresses mining, staking, wrapping and airdrops. Mining digital commodities on public, permissionless crypto networks that use proof-of-work is called Protocol Mining, and staking digital commodities on such networks that use proof-of-stake is called Protocol Staking; the mining it takes in is Self (or Solo) Mining and mining pools, and the staking it takes in is Self (or Solo) Staking, staking directly with a third party via self-custody, custodial arrangements and liquid staking. The conclusion is that these activities, "in the manner and under the circumstances described in this release", do not involve the offer and sale of a security within the meaning of section 2(a)(1) of the Securities Act and section 3(a)(10) of the Exchange Act. The conditions sit in the sentences and in the footnotes: an alternative payment of rewards, for one, comes with the proviso that the reward amounts are not fixed, guaranteed, or greater than those awarded by the PoS Network's software protocol.

What it says it does not address

One passage draws the boundary explicitly: the interpretation concerns the federal securities laws, the guidance included in it concerns the administration of the Commodity Exchange Act by the CFTC, and no interference is intended with respect to any other legal regime, including the federal tax laws under the Internal Revenue Code or the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. A separate footnote states that to the extent service providers provide services not discussed in that section, their activities are outside the scope of the release too. Outside the scope means not addressed, and this article therefore does not read it as "therefore it is a security", nor as "therefore it may now be done".

What follows is an example designed by the editors, not a hands-on test: someone used a staking feature on an offshore platform, saw a headline saying that staking is not a securities transaction, and wanted to ask whether that means the platform is regulated from now on. Read against the document, the inference does not hold. The release addresses a named set of arrangements; it does not say whether any operator is registered or licensed, and it lists no names. It also expressly places outside its scope arrangements in which a custodian or a liquid staking provider decides whether, when, or how much to stake, or guarantees or otherwise sets the amount of rewards.

Taiwan is read off the document in the same way. Checking the Federal Register full text, the as-published PDF and the CFTC press release used here through September 17, 2026, we saw no wording that mentions Taiwan or Taiwan's regulators. To confirm that yourself, the Federal Register citation 91 FR 13714 finds the same document; as of this article's verification date, the list of corrections the Federal Register records for it is empty.

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