The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent its crypto custody rule rewrite to the White House on Tuesday. The text is secret. The filing’s labels are not, and one of them gives the direction away.
The proposal, called Amendments to the Custody Rules, reached the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on August 25. The rule decides how investment advisers may hold client crypto.
What the SEC Crypto Custody Filing Tags Reveal
The OMB record carries two labels. The first is economically significant. That tag marks rules with at least $100 million in yearly economic impact.
The second label matters more. The filing sits in the deregulatory column under Executive Order 14192. President Donald Trump signed that order in January 2025. It tells agencies to scrap ten rules for every new one they write.
So before anyone reads a single line, the direction is on record. The SEC plans to loosen crypto custody duties, not tighten them.
The agenda abstract adds two more facts. It names crypto assets directly, and it targets a formal proposal for October. That step opens a public comment period.
A Reversal Two Years in the Making
Today’s rule forces advisers to park client assets with a qualified custodian, usually a bank or broker-dealer. Few of those firms would touch crypto. That left advisers with almost no compliant way to hold it.
Former Chair Gary Gensler pushed the other way. His 2023 Safeguarding Rule would have widened custody duties, and his staff probed advisers over custody. The agency withdrew that plan in June 2025.
Since then, named players have shaped the rewrite. Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz asked the SEC to modernize crypto custody rules.
In December 2025, lawyers from Delphi Ventures and Multicoin Capital sent the agency a custody framework. It asks for room to use multi-signature and multi-party computation (MPC) wallets. These tools split key control, so no one party can move the assets.
One Week, Two Proposals, and a Senate Clock
The custody filing landed one week after the SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, a fundraising regime for tokens. The pair covers both ends of the market. One sets how projects raise money. The other sets how institutions hold it.
“As we continue the Commission’s efforts to provide clarity for crypto markets, and as Congress works to establish a lasting regulatory framework, Regulation Crypto Assets seeks to provide … clear pathways to raise capital under the federal securities laws,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins made the point in the agency’s August 18 statement.
Congress, meanwhile, is stuck. The House passed the Clarity Act 294-134 in July 2025. The bill would split crypto oversight between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It has sat in the Senate since, and now faces a 60-vote test around September 15. Its passage odds remain shaky.
The SEC is not waiting for that vote. Two signals come next. How long OMB holds the rule, and which firms request meetings while the text stays sealed.
Bitrue