President Trump’s regulators announce joint digital asset project ‘Project Crypto’

America’s financial markets are the strongest and most trusted in the world because they are built on clear rules and fair enforcement.

Rather than adhering to these principles, the Biden administration has chased headlines with flashy enforcement actions and enacted opaque rules that stifle progress. But thanks to President Donald Trump’s leadership, America’s financial regulators are returning to the fundamental principles that made our markets the envy of the world.

As new technologies reshape the financial services landscape, we must ensure that innovation thrives on American soil and under American law, for ordinary Americans.

To this end, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are relaunching Project Crypto as a joint policy initiative to better prepare U.S. markets for the digital age.

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As markets move on-chain, regulators must also keep pace. Congress is advancing bipartisan legislation to establish a federal framework for digital asset markets. However, legislation alone cannot provide the clarity that investors and market participants need. We need to combine this with disciplined regulatory enforcement based on merit neutrality and free market principles. These are the results that the SEC and CFTC are poised to usher in a new era of coordinated and permanent financial regulation.

We designed Project Crypto to ensure that the United States is ready to strengthen global financial leadership when Congress takes action. This includes ordering new requirements rather than piling them on with a smart implementation roadmap. Create a clear regulatory entry point for compliant participants. Modernize monitoring tools to reflect on-chain and hybrid market activity. And we transparently engage with new entrants, incumbents, investors, and consumers alike.

We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets, and upcoming legislation or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

At the core of Project Crypto and its broader harmonization efforts is a shared philosophy that financial regulation must be precise, not punitive. Rules must be tightly tailored to address significant risks, agile enough to adapt to technological change, and firmly anchored in the agency’s legal authority. This principle guides our approach to registration, disclosure, market surveillance, custody, clearing and supervision in digital asset markets, while avoiding the reflex of imposing legacy structures inappropriate to new technological realities.

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For too long, bureaucratic regulators have forced market participants to navigate boundaries that are unclear in application and inconsistent in design, especially when economically similar activities are treated differently based solely on traditional jurisdictional silos. This fragmentation is more than just an inconvenience. It limits innovation and hinders opportunities for investors.

In on-chain markets where trading, clearing, settlement, and custody are integrated, regulatory seams create friction and undermine risk management, margin efficiency, and oversight effectiveness. As the market moves, goes on-chain, and participation deepens, these distortions will become even worse.

Maintaining overlapping or contradictory requirements for the same economic activity undermines market resilience and regulatory clarity. The status quo cannot sustain America’s financial dominance in the 21st century. Project Crypto aims to address and possibly eliminate these conflicts.

The SEC-CFTC harmonization agenda starts with the basics: consistent definitions, coordinated oversight, and seamless and secure data sharing between agencies. Market participants should not be burdened with duplicate agency registrations or sets of regulations in order to offer economically similar products that can be effectively regulated under a unified approach. Harmonization strengthens standards through consistency, predictability, and economic rationality.

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We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets, and upcoming legislation or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

Project Crypto recognizes that today’s markets no longer conform to 20th century silos and represents a modern model of interagency coordination. The SEC and CFTC bring complementary legal authority, supervisory capabilities, and market expertise. These capabilities work together to be symbiotic rather than redundant, providing clarity and principled oversight as market structures evolve.

The stakes are high. Jurisdictions around the world are actively competing to attract digital asset activity, with some prioritizing speed over safeguards and others imposing rigidities that inhibit growth. America’s advantage has always been its ability to balance both.

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If you fail to provide clarity, innovation will move elsewhere. Strong regulation will only exacerbate risks rather than reduce them. Project Crypto reflects a shared belief that America can lead by combining what it has always done best: a strong rule of law and openness to progress.

The future of finance is built somewhere. We will ensure that Project Crypto is built here under rules that protect investors, foster innovation, and solidify U.S. leadership in the global financial system through disciplined and harmonized minimum effective dose regulations.

Michael S. Selig is Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.