{"id":39952,"date":"2025-08-01T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=39952"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:01:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:01:31","slug":"sec-just-lit-a-rocket-under-ethereum-says-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=39952","title":{"rendered":"SEC Just \u2018Lit A Rocket Under\u2019 Ethereum, Says Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Eric Conner, a prominent Ethereum figure who helped design the network\u2019s landmark fee-market overhaul EIP-1559 and recently left the ecosystem to work in artificial intelligence, said late Thursday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission\u2019s new policy direction amounts to a dramatic tailwind for Ether. \u201cThe SEC just lit a rocket under Ethereum,\u201d Conner wrote<\/a> on X on July 31, reacting to a policy address delivered hours earlier by SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins in Washington. Conner characterized the remarks as a \u201cfull-blown regulatory pivot,\u201d adding that Atkins \u201cinformally but unmistakably said Ethereum is not a security,\u201d and that the agency had put ETH \u201cin the spotlight as the foundation for the next era of US finance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Ethereum The Biggest Beneficiary Of \u2018Project Crypto\u2019?<\/h2>\n

Atkins<\/a>\u2019 prepared speech, titled \u201cAmerican Leadership in the Digital Finance Revolution,\u201d unveiled a program he called Project Crypto\u2014a Commission-wide effort to refit securities regulation for on-chain markets. \u201cWe are at the threshold of a new era \u2026 I am announcing the launch of \u2018Project Crypto\u2019\u2014a Commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America\u2019s financial markets to move on-chain,\u201d he said, while stressing that his remarks reflected his views rather than the Commission\u2019s as a whole. The chair tied the initiative to a recent White House-led policy push and said he had directed SEC staff to draft clear rules for crypto asset distributions, custody, and trading, and to consider interpretive and exemptive relief \u201cin the coming months\u201d to avoid stifling innovation.<\/p>\n

The most consequential signal for digital-asset markets was Atkins\u2019 stance on asset classification. \u201cDespite what the SEC has said in the past, most crypto assets are not securities<\/a>,\u201d he said, promising \u201cbright-line rules\u201d to help market participants determine whether a token should be treated as a digital collectible, a digital commodity, or a stablecoin, and to craft purpose-fit disclosures, exemptions and safe harbors\u2014including for ICOs, airdrops and network rewards. In parallel, he argued that classifying a token as a security \u201cshould not be a scarlet letter,\u201d and outlined a path for crypto-securities to flourish within US markets.<\/p>\n

Atkins also sketched an ambitious market-structure blueprint. He backed side-by-side trading of non-security crypto assets and crypto-asset securities on SEC-regulated venues, floated a \u201cReg Super-App\u201d concept to let broker-dealers offer trading, staking and lending under a single license, and said he would seek to modernize custody rules so investment advisers and broker-dealers can hold crypto assets under updated standards. \u201cIt will be a priority of my chairmanship to carry out the [report\u2019s] recommendation to modernize the SEC\u2019s custody requirements,\u201d he noted, while defending users\u2019 right to self-custody and staking.<\/p>\n

Crucially for tokenization, Atkins said the Commission would work with firms distributing tokenized securities in the US and provide relief where appropriate, pointing to pent-up demand \u201cfrom household names on Wall Street<\/a> to unicorn tech companies\u201d and explicitly referencing compliance-enabled token standards such as ERC-3643. In a section on decentralized finance, he pledged to \u201ccreate space\u201d for both fully on-chain, non-intermediated systems and intermediated models, and said DeFi \u201cwill be part of our securities markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why Ethereum Takes Center Stage<\/h2>\n

While Atkins\u2019 prepared remarks did not name Ethereum explicitly, they repeatedly referenced Ethereum-native concepts and standards, and outside the speech the chair has recently spoken more directly about ETH. In a July 21 appearance on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box, Atkins said the agency has \u201cstated informally more than formally that Ether is not a security,\u201d adding that whether corporates hold ETH in treasury \u201cis up to companies to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conner unpacked the same themes in an eight-part thread that ricocheted across Crypto-X. The former core dev argued that the speech \u201cisn\u2019t just lip service. It\u2019s a full-blown regulatory pivot,\u201d stressing that Atkins had \u201cinformally but unmistakably\u201d removed the security overhang from Ether. \u201cThat\u2019s the clarity institutions have been waiting for,\u201d he wrote, predicting corporate-treasury allocations and a deep link-up between DeFi and Wall Street.<\/p>\n

He hailed the endorsement of public-chain tokenization as still more consequential: \u201cHe said: let\u2019s bring regulated markets on-chain\u2026 Ethereum is the obvious base layer for this.\u201d And, in a swipe at legacy doctrine, Conner cheered the promise of purpose-built rules: \u201cNo more trying to jam crypto into 1940s laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether that enthusiasm endures will depend on how quickly Project Crypto moves from rhetorical flourish to concrete rule-making\u2014but, as Conner put it in his closing salvo, \u201cETH isn\u2019t just a coin anymore. It\u2019s the US government\u2019s preferred settlement layer for modern finance. Regulatory uncertainty has been ETH\u2019s biggest overhang, and now it\u2019s being lifted. The SEC just put Ethereum in the spotlight as the foundation for the next era of US finance. This is bigger than an ETF. It\u2019s regulatory alignment with ETH as the global digital asset backbone. Get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, ETH traded at $3,669.<\/p>\n

\"Ethereum<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Conner, a prominent Ethereum figure who helped design the network\u2019s landmark fee-market overhaul EIP-1559 and recently left the ecosystem to work in artificial intelligence, said late Thursday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission\u2019s new policy direction amounts to a dramatic tailwind for Ether. \u201cThe SEC just lit a rocket under Ethereum,\u201d Conner wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-39952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}