The SEC launches new project to engage small crypto startups

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that its Crypto Task Force will hold a series of roundtables nationwide. The watchdog wants to allow more stakeholders to engage directly with Commissioner Hester Peirce, who is leading the initiative.

The announcement comes on the heels of Project Crypto — a bold new program introduced by SEC Chair Paul Atkins to rethink how crypto assets are regulated in the US. The initiative seeks to transition more of the financial system “on-chain” and craft a regulatory framework that aligns with rapid digital innovation.

Revealed during a livestreamed press conference, the initiative marks a shift from previous efforts driven by large institutions. This time, the spotlight is on smaller crypto ventures with under 10 employees and less than two years in operation.

Project Crypto triggers broader conversations

Project Crypto is the SEC’s most extensive foray yet into digital assets. It seeks to resolve long-standing regulatory gray areas, including how tokens are categorized, what constitutes a securities offering, and whether decentralized finance should be governed under federal law.

In a statement announcing Project Crypto, the SEC said it will also address custody of digital assets, registration paths for crypto projects, and ways to migrate financial system elements onto blockchain infrastructure to enhance transparency and efficiency.

Chair Atkins said that Project Crypto was an opportunity to reimagine how the financial system engages with innovation. He emphasized that this process could not happen in a vacuum and stressed the need for real voices, real use cases, and genuine concerns to guide the effort.

Commissioner Hester Peirce has been pushing the SEC’s Crypto Task Force for over a year and will preside over the roundtables.

Roundtables aimed at small teams and Startups

The series of crypto roundtables nationwide will occur from August 4 to December. The project will open in Berkeley, California, and move on to cities like Boston, Dallas, Chicago, and New York, before going to other towns. Each stop on this tour is intended to help the Commission get intimate with smaller, early-stage crypto startups that have historically been neglected in regulatory discussions.

Unlike the earlier round-to-die type cribs in Washington D.C., where they corralled industry bigwigs and Wall Street mother fucking firms, these are for startups with 10 employees or fewer that have been under two years of operation‎.

Coughlin explained in a blog post that the goal is to hear directly from builders—those developing crypto tools, infrastructure, and markets. He added that the roundtables are focused on the people who never had time or resources to attend such precedential events.

Hester Peirce, a SEC commissioner who had publicly chided the agency in recent months for failing to advance crypto regulation by not attending earlier meetings on the issue, called Monday’s move a step forward but said it was not meaningful enough to move regulatory work ahead. She added that being inundated with work by the Commission made it difficult to spend even more time engaging, but underlined what smaller players say is precisely relevant in forming actionable and forward-looking legislation.

The SEC also has said these roundtables should be open, not exclusive, for serious discussion and dialogue rather than counterproductive lawyering. At the very least, feedback from its tour can help inform future proposals for rules and regulate what authority it gives to the superintendent, smaller or more nascent entities within crypto.

Earlier this year, similar SEC crypto roundtables in Washington included the likes of BlackRock and Fidelity, along with two cryptocurrency exchanges — Coinbase and Kraken. Topics ranged from crypto custody to tokenized securities and merging DeFi with traditional finance. But others criticized these hours for leaving out the “long tail” of crypto innovation — the scrappy, early-stage builders toiling without legal teams or institutional support.

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