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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a Commission-level interpretive framework with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 3, 2026, formally initiating interagency review of a document titled "Commission Interpretation on Application of the Federal Securities Laws to Certain Types of Crypto Assets and Certain Transactions Involving Crypto Assets." The submission marks the first time in the agency's history that a Commission-level crypto classification framework has entered the federal regulatory pipeline. Unlike the Division-level staff statement the SEC issued on January 28, 2026 — which explicitly created no new obligations — a Commission interpretation carries substantially greater legal weight and does not require the procedural steps of a formal rulemaking, as The Block reported.
The submission advances a token taxonomy that Chair Paul Atkins first outlined in a November 12, 2025 speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The taxonomy proposes four categories: digital commodities and network tokens, digital collectibles, digital tools — defined to include membership instruments, credentials, and on-chain title instruments — and tokenized securities such as equity shares or bonds recorded on a blockchain. The first three categories would fall outside SEC jurisdiction; the fourth would remain fully subject to federal securities law regardless of the underlying technology, a principle the SEC's three operating Divisions had already jointly articulated in January. The Commission filing now represents the formal codification of that taxonomy at the agency's highest interpretive authority, and brings the SEC into the White House review process that Executive Order 14215 — signed February 18, 2025 — extended to independent agencies for the first time.
The regulatory architecture surrounding this filing has been building in coordinated steps. The CFTC issued complementary no-action letters on tokenized collateral in December 2025, and the two agencies announced intent to sign a joint memorandum of understanding on taxonomy harmonisation following a January 29 coordination event. The CFTC separately submitted its own OIRA measure on prediction markets on March 2, one day before the SEC filing, indicating a sequenced interagency strategy rather than independent action. Under EO 12866, OIRA may take up to 90 calendar days to complete review, though the White House has signalled expedited timelines for deregulatory measures.
For participants in real estate tokenization and the broader RWA market, the classification distinctions carry direct operational consequences. Tokenized REIT shares and SPV-structured fractional property interests remain unambiguously securities under the taxonomy and will face full registration and disclosure obligations once the interpretation is finalised. On-chain title instruments — property deed tokens and equivalent title-conveying structures — were cited by Chair Atkins as examples of "digital tools" potentially outside SEC jurisdiction, though no categorical ruling has been made and a facts-and-circumstances analysis is expected in the final text, as Morrison Foerster noted. Skadden has separately flagged that the interaction between this federal taxonomy and state-level commercial law — including UCC Article 12 digital asset provisions enacted across multiple states — remains unresolved and is not addressed in any published guidance. Issuers, platforms, and legal counsel structuring tokenised property products will need to assess each instrument against the final taxonomy once OIRA review concludes and the Commission publishes the interpretation; the full text of the submitted document has not been made publicly available.
