SEC's 2026 agenda puts onchain custody and tokenized trading on the rulemaking map
Chair Paul Atkins says the agency will work on capital raising, custody and trading for tokenized securities, but the statement is a roadmap rather than a finished rule.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has put crypto market plumbing inside its 2026 regulatory agenda. In a July 7 statement, Chairman Paul Atkins said the agency is pursuing rules that would bring more products onshore, clarify capital raising with crypto assets, and explain how market participants can custody and facilitate trading of tokenized securities onchain.
The language is broad, but the areas are concrete. A tokenized security touches issuance and disclosure, the custody of the underlying asset, the broker or exchange that handles orders, and the ledger used to record ownership. Rules in any one area can shift the economics of the others. A bank deciding whether to support an onchain product needs to know who controls the asset, which records count, and how a transfer is settled when the blockchain and the traditional market system meet.
The agenda has now moved into a formal review track. The White House regulatory-review database shows RIN 3235-AN46, “Amendments to the Custody Rules,” was received on Aug. 25 and is at the proposed-rule stage. The related Unified Agenda entry says the SEC is considering amendments or new rules covering advisory-client and fund assets, including crypto assets, and targets an October 2026 notice of proposed rulemaking. The entry is a regulatory milestone, not a Commission vote or a public proposal.
A roadmap, not a new permission
Atkins's statement is a policy signal, not the text of a proposed rule. The next formal steps would be a release, a Commission vote, a public comment period and a final action. Until those documents arrive, firms cannot treat the agenda as a new custody exemption or a blanket approval for tokenized products.
The new review record does not disclose the draft's custody standards, eligible custodians or treatment of self-custody. The Defiant's report notes that the proposed text is not public and that the SEC's earlier 2023 safeguarding proposal was withdrawn in 2025. The supportable conclusion is therefore that the agency has restarted a rulemaking process, not that new custody obligations are already in force.
The SEC's January staff statement on tokenized securities provides the current baseline: a tokenized security remains a security, while the rights and obligations can vary according to whether the issuer or a third party created the token. The new agenda points toward the operating rules around that baseline, especially for custody and secondary trading.
Why the plumbing matters
The market impact will come from implementation details. A workable framework could make it easier for broker-dealers, custodians, exchanges and asset managers to connect onchain records to regulated workflows. A complicated framework could leave tokenization confined to bespoke platforms that can carry the legal and operational overhead themselves.
The SEC's agenda therefore matters less as a promise of immediate product launches than as a list of questions the agency intends to answer. The next evidence will be proposed text and the comments it draws from market operators, custodians, issuers and investors.
