The SEC exam staff will not treat crypto as a standalone risk in its 2026 budget priorities, marking a marked departure from the agency’s approach in 2024 and 2025.
The Division of Examinations’ 17-page “2026 Examination Priorities” explains areas of focus for investment advisors, funds, broker-dealers and market firms, and reiterates cross-cutting work on information security, operational resilience, identity theft, the amended Regulation SP and anti-money laundering.
In the emerging financial technology section, the paper focuses on automated advice, algorithms and AI, including whether tools deliver compliant recommendations.
According to the SEC report, this is the case no mention of crypto, crypto assets, digital assets, virtual currency or blockchain in each section, including areas where the topic previously appeared such as fintech and AML.
The omission is notable because the 2024 and 2025 priorities explicitly identified crypto as a focus. Under the SEC’s priorities for 2024, “Cryptoassets and Emerging Financial Technology” had a section called it stating that investigations would prioritize companies involved in cryptoassets and related products.
The 2025 priorities again referenced crypto assets alongside AI, cybersecurity and AML as critical risk areas, with law firm summaries emphasizing continued attention to companies offering crypto-related services. The 2026 document removes these references entirely, even as other technology topics expand.
A simple before-and-after overview of the written priorities illustrates the shift.
| Year priorities | Crypto mentioned as a clear risk | “Crypto” or equivalent terms in the text |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Yes, special section | Multiple, including a section title |
| 2025 | Yes, listed as one of the main risks | Several, with explicit headings |
| 2026 | No | Zero |
The policy and personnel background explain the timing.
The White House issued guidance in early 2025 to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, to limit federal work on central bank digital currencies and to establish a President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, according to Pillsbury Law’s summary of the January order.
A March fact sheet focused on the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a stockpile of U.S. digital assets, with crypto seen as a strategic asset rather than a speculative corner of the markets, according to the White House.
At the SEC, Paul S. Atkins was sworn in as chairman in April 2025 and, according to the SEC and legal commentary from Armstrong Teasdale, he is associated with a lighter regulatory approach and an emphasis on capital formation. In September, Meg Ryan was appointed enforcement director, a move read by some as signaling a shift in enforcement attitudes, according to the Financial Times.
Enforcement was already deviating from the peak pace of the Gensler era. Cornerstone Research counted 46 crypto-related enforcement actions in 2023, the most on record, and 33 in 2024, a decline of about 30% year over year.
Agencywide, fiscal year 2024 ended with a total of 583 enforcement actions, a decrease from the previous year, while financial remedies reached a record $8.2 billion, heavily impacted by the Terraform Labs settlement, according to the SEC’s fiscal year 2024 enforcement results. The mix is trending toward fewer cases with large fines related to prior behavior, rather than frequent refilings.
Under the new chairman, various issues from the past have been reduced or resolved.
The SEC ended the long-running Ripple case with a $125 million fine and an order limited to institutional sales.
It also closed its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto activities without charges. Investopedia reported that the SEC had moved to dismiss the lawsuit against Coinbase, which alleged unregistered exchange activity and staking products.
Placed alongside the 2026 priorities, these outcomes point to a reset where investigations and enforcement come together in a narrower posture, focusing on fraud, custody, marketing, AML and operational risk through technology-neutral rules, rather than treating tokens as a separate surveillance channel.
The global cryptocurrency market cap exceeded $4 trillion in July 2025. Meanwhile, US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted approximately $35.7 billion in net inflows in 2024, with continued flows through most of 2025.
The investor base for crypto-linked products now includes major asset managers, broker-dealers and retirement channels that fall directly within the SEC’s investigative perimeter. Still, the new priorities guide exam staff toward AI risk, data security and privacy management, Regulation SP incident response and identity theft controls, and not crypto-specific assessments.
Market conditions underline the tension.
Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000, down nearly 30% from its October peak above $126,000, and Ethereum is trading below $3,000.
The broader crypto market lost about $1 trillion in six weeks. This is the kind of volatility that can test custody arrangements, liquidity management and marketing suitability in regulated channels. The exam program addresses these risks through subject-agnostic lenses, such as complex product surveillance, cyber resilience and AML, rather than through a crypto label.
Outside the United States, regulators are moving towards sector-specific regulations. The EU framework for markets in crypto assets is now fully in place, with the stablecoin rules in force since June 30, 2024 and the broader regime for crypto asset service providers applying since December 30, 2024, ESMA said.
Non-compliant stablecoins were delisted on March 31, 2025, and according to Stablecoin Insider, analysts predict a large stablecoin market in the Eurozone by the end of the year. The UK has published a draft legal instrument to create new regulated activities for crypto assets and opened consultations on trading platforms, brokerage, staking and DeFi, while considering stricter controls on consumer risks.
Hong Kong continues to refine its licensing regime for virtual asset trading platforms, announcing an ‘ASPI-Re’ roadmap of 12 initiatives in 2025, including steps to enable licensed platforms to share global order books with affiliates to increase liquidity. Singapore’s MAS completed a stablecoin framework in 2023, which came into effect in 2024, for single-currency stablecoins pegged to the SGD or G10 currencies.
This divergence creates three plausible trajectories for the period 2026-2027.
A basic outcome is benign neglect, with the SEC leaving crypto out of exam priorities and accounting for cryptocurrency exposure through custody, AML, cyber, and marketing rules, while enforcement activity drifts toward single-digit case counts targeting fraud, consistent with the direction in Cornerstone Research’s numbers.
A realignment outcome would require congressional action on the market structure that pushes most spot tokens to the CFTC and reserves the SEC for tokenized securities and fund shares, after which the exam program could reintroduce a narrow crypto scope limited to securities products.
A ‘snap-back’ outcome would arise from a high-impact failure, such as a stablecoin collapse, an exchange incident or a product-level shock in an ETF complex, which could lead to hearings and a reinsertion of crypto into the 2027 or 2028 priorities with new specialist resources.
For centralized exchanges and broker-dealer hybrids, near-term exam exposure tends to AML, custody and eligibility of complex products, as well as the CFTC for derivatives.
For DeFi, the SEC’s omission reinforces that on-chain oversight is not on the short-term agenda, while processes in the EU, UK and Hong Kong could become the first sources of binding standards.
For stablecoin issuers, MiCA and MAS frameworks are fast becoming reference points for design and compliance, even for US market participants operating globally. For ETF sponsors and asset managers, the exam program’s focus on complex wrappers, disclosure, interest obligations and operational resilience remains, regardless of the underlying index.
Ultimately, the SEC’s silence could speak louder than the crusades of the past, as the shift emphasizes the move from reflexive hostility to deliberate restraint.
After years when silence often preceded a subpoena, the new stance suggests something simpler: crypto is no longer the SEC’s special project.
Whether that turns out to be an overdue normalization or a temporary pause, the center of gravity of American supervision is in flux, and this time not because of what the SEC is withholding, but because it is finally stepping out of the spotlight.