SEC

The SEC, or U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is the American federal agency that regulates securities markets, including stocks, bonds, and investment products. It matters in crypto because the SEC takes the position that many crypto tokens are securities, which would subject their issuers and the platforms trading them to registration and disclosure requirements.

The SEC's involvement in crypto has played out largely through enforcement actions and approvals. It has sued token issuers for conducting unregistered securities offerings and pursued exchanges for listing assets it deemed securities; it has also approved regulated products, most notably spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which let investors gain bitcoin exposure through ordinary brokerage accounts. For example, a project selling tokens to fund development, while promising buyers profits from the team's efforts, is the kind of arrangement the SEC has historically treated as a securities offering under the Howey test.

A common misconception is that the SEC regulates all crypto in the United States; commodities-style oversight of assets like bitcoin falls largely to the CFTC, and the boundary between the two agencies has been a running policy debate. The SEC's decisions ripple globally because so much crypto trading, fundraising, and institutional product development touches U.S. investors, so its approvals and lawsuits often move markets far beyond American borders.