Top Wall Street Firms Met With SEC Crypto Task Force to Discuss DeFi Concerns

In brief

• Wall Street heavyweights met with the SEC Tuesday to discuss potential concerns with the agency’s crypto agenda.
• A top securities trade group, SIFMA, warned that exemptions for tokenized securities and DeFi projects could destabilize markets.
• SEC Chair Paul Atkins recently promised to formalize such exemptions for crypto by the end of January.

As crypto’s coveted market structure bill stalls in the Senate, top Wall Street players met with the SEC Tuesday to discuss numerous concerns with the regulator’s permissive approach to digital assets. Representatives of JPMorgan, Citadel, and SIFMA, the powerful securities industry trade group, met with the SEC’s crypto task force yesterday to talk through the agency’s bold new approach to digital assets, according to agency records. Topics raised at the meeting included worries that the SEC’s imminent plans to provide exemptive relief for tokenized securities could damage the broader U.S. economy, according to meeting records. These concerns also focused on the SEC’s stated plans to carve out some decentralized finance, or DeFi, projects from obligations to comply with U.S. securities laws. 

“Regulatory treatment should be based on economic characteristics, not on the technology used or categorical labels (e.g., ‘DeFi’),” materials distributed at the meeting, prepared by SIFMA, read. “Broad exemptions for tokenized trading activities could undermine investor protection and lead to market disruptions.” SIFMA specifically pointed to October’s crypto flash crash—the largest single-day crypto market wipeout in history, with $19 billion in liquidations—as a peek at what could happen should tokenized securities be allowed to trade outside existing securities laws. Representatives for Citadel and JPMorgan did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment. A SIFMA representative declined to comment. A source familiar with the matter told Decrypt that key DeFi advocates had not been aware Tuesday’s meeting had taken place.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins said recently that he plans to issue sweeping innovation exemptions for the crypto sector this month. Such exemptions would give crypto companies and projects a guarantee that they would face no risk of triggering securities laws violations for experimenting in certain areas, potentially including tokenized securities and DeFi. The SEC’s aggressive push to grant the crypto industry long-desired legal assurances comes as a parallel legal effort stalls in Congress. Progress on a crypto market structure bill, which would enshrine protections for crypto in federal law, has slowed considerably this month, after skirmishes between crypto leaders and other stakeholders derailed a key Senate vote. One such tension, between DeFi advocates and SIFMA, focused on language in the bill that would exempt certain decentralized financial services and their developers from legal oversight. Progress appeared to have been made in negotiations between both parties, though, and decentralization advocates came out in favor of where the bill stood earlier this month. It ultimately turned out to be another inter-industry battle that posed a more existential threat to the bill’s fate: one between Coinbase and the banking lobby over rewards on stablecoin holdings.