SEC eliminates all references to cryptocurrency from its 2026 agenda.

SEC examination personnel will not regard cryptocurrency as an independent risk in its fiscal 2026 priorities, indicating a significant shift from the agency’s stance in 2024 and 2025.

The Division of Examinations’ 17-page “2026 Examination Priorities” outlines key focus areas for investment advisers, funds, broker-dealers, and market utilities, while reaffirming ongoing efforts in information security, operational resilience, identity theft, the revised Regulation S-P, and anti-money laundering.

In the section addressing emerging financial technology, the document emphasizes automated advice, algorithms, and AI, particularly regarding whether these tools generate compliant recommendations.

The SEC’s report does not reference cryptocurrency, crypto assets, digital assets, virtual currency, or blockchain in any section, including those where these topics were previously mentioned, such as fintech and AML.

This omission is significant as the 2024 and 2025 priorities explicitly identified cryptocurrency as a focal point. The SEC’s 2024 priorities included a dedicated section titled “Crypto Assets and Emerging Financial Technology,” indicating that examinations would prioritize firms engaged in crypto assets and related offerings.

The 2025 priorities again mentioned crypto assets alongside AI, cybersecurity, and AML as vital risk areas, with law firm summaries highlighting ongoing scrutiny of firms providing crypto-related services. The 2026 document entirely removes these references, even as other technology topics are expanded.

A straightforward comparison of the written priorities illustrates this transition.

Priorities year	Crypto named as distinct risk	“Crypto” or equivalent terms in text
2024	Yes, dedicated section	Multiple, including a section title
2025	Yes, listed among key risks	Multiple, with explicit headings
2026	No	Zero

The context of policy and personnel helps clarify the timing.

The White House shifted direction in early 2025 with directives aimed at fostering the responsible development and use of digital assets, limiting federal involvement in central bank digital currency, and establishing a President’s Working Group on digital asset markets, as noted in Pillsbury Law’s summary of the January order.

A March fact sheet highlighted the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. digital asset stockpile, positioning cryptocurrency as a strategic asset rather than merely a speculative market segment, according to the White House.

At the SEC, Paul S. Atkins was sworn in as chair in April 2025 and is associated with a more lenient regulatory approach and a focus on capital formation, as per the SEC and legal commentary from Armstrong Teasdale. In September, Meg Ryan was appointed as enforcement director, a move interpreted by some as indicative of a change in enforcement strategy, according to the Financial Times.

Enforcement had already begun to shift away from the heightened pace of the Gensler era. Cornerstone Research recorded 46 crypto-related enforcement actions in 2023, the highest on record, and 33 in 2024, reflecting a decrease of approximately 30% year over year.

Overall, fiscal 2024 concluded with 583 total enforcement actions, a decline from the previous year, while financial remedies reached a record $8.2 billion, significantly influenced by the Terraform Labs settlement, according to the SEC’s fiscal 2024 enforcement results. The trend has leaned towards fewer cases with substantial penalties related to earlier conduct, rather than frequent new filings.

Under the new chair, several longstanding matters have been narrowed or resolved.

The SEC concluded its prolonged Ripple case with a $125 million penalty and an injunction limited to institutional sales.

It also wrapped up its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto operations without filing charges. Investopedia reported that the SEC sought to dismiss its lawsuit against Coinbase, which had alleged unregistered exchange activities and staking products.

When viewed alongside the 2026 priorities, these outcomes indicate a reset where examinations and enforcement converge on a more focused approach, concentrating on fraud, custody, marketing, AML, and operational risk through technology-neutral regulations, rather than treating tokens as a distinct supervisory category.

The global crypto market capitalization exceeded $4 trillion in July 2025. Meanwhile, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted approximately $35.7 billion in net inflows in 2024, with continued inflows for much of 2025.

The investor base for crypto-linked products now includes large asset managers, broker-dealers, and retirement channels that fall directly within the SEC’s examination scope. However, the new priorities direct exam staff towards AI risk, data security, and privacy governance, Regulation S-P incident response, and identity theft controls, rather than crypto-specific assessments.

Market conditions highlight the tension.

Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000, down nearly 30% from its October peak above $126,000, while Ethereum is trading below $3,000.

The broader crypto market has lost approximately $1 trillion in six weeks. This level of volatility can challenge custody arrangements, liquidity management, and marketing suitability in regulated environments. The examination program is addressing these risks through topic-agnostic perspectives, such as complex product oversight, cyber resilience, and AML, rather than through a crypto-specific lens.

Internationally, regulators are progressing towards sector-specific regulations. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework is now fully operational, with stablecoin regulations effective since June 30, 2024, and the broader regime for crypto-asset service providers in place since December 30, 2024, according to ESMA.

Non-compliant stablecoins faced delistings by March 31, 2025, and analysts anticipate a significant euro-area stablecoin market by the end of the year, according to Stablecoin Insider. The UK has released a draft statutory instrument to establish new regulated activities for crypto assets and has initiated consultations on trading platforms, intermediation, staking, and DeFi, while considering stricter consumer risk controls.

Hong Kong continues to refine its licensing framework for virtual asset trading platforms and announced a 12-initiative “A-S-P-I-Re” roadmap in 2025, which includes measures to allow licensed platforms to share global order books with affiliates to enhance liquidity. Singapore’s MAS finalized a stablecoin framework in 2023, which became effective in 2024, for single-currency stablecoins pegged to the SGD or G10 currencies.

This divergence sets up three plausible paths for 2026 to 2027.

A baseline scenario is benign neglect, where the SEC excludes cryptocurrency from the examination priorities and processes crypto exposure through custody, AML, cyber, and marketing regulations, while enforcement activity trends toward single-digit case counts focused on fraud, consistent with Cornerstone Research’s findings.

A realignment scenario would necessitate congressional action on market structure that directs most spot tokens to the CFTC, reserving the SEC for tokenized securities and fund shares, after which the examination program could reintroduce a limited crypto scope focused on securities products.

A snap-back scenario could emerge from a significant failure, such as a stablecoin collapse, an exchange incident, or a product-level shock in an ETF complex, potentially prompting hearings and a reintegration of cryptocurrency into the 2027 or 2028 priorities with new specialized resources.

For centralized exchanges and broker-dealer hybrids, the immediate examination focus is on AML, custody, and complex product suitability, as well as the CFTC for derivatives.

For DeFi, the SEC’s omission reinforces that on-chain supervision is not part of its near-term examination agenda, while EU, UK, and Hong Kong regulations may become the first sources of binding standards.

For stablecoin issuers, MiCA and MAS frameworks are rapidly becoming reference points for design and compliance, even for U.S. market participants operating globally. For ETF sponsors and asset managers, the examination program’s focus on complex wrappers, disclosure, best interest obligations, and operational resilience remains intact, regardless of the underlying index.

Ultimately, the SEC’s silence may convey more than its previous campaigns, as the shift underscores a transition from reflexive hostility to intentional restraint.

After years when silence often preceded a subpoena, the new stance suggests a simpler reality: cryptocurrency is no longer the SEC’s special project.

Whether this represents overdue normalization or a temporary pause, the center of gravity in U.S. oversight is shifting, and this time, not due to what the SEC withholds, but because it is finally stepping out of the spotlight.

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