PANews reported on March 22 that, according to Forbes, the joint guidance document on crypto assets issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was officially filed with the Federal Register on March 20 and is expected to take effect immediately after its official release on March 23 (next Monday), providing direct and actionable regulatory guidance for crypto market participants.
This document, with committee-level authority, will fully replace the "Analysis Framework for Digital Asset 'Investment Contracts'" released in 2019. It will also provide clear guidance for the enforcement and daily oversight work of the SEC and CFTC, marking the formal departure of the previous ambiguous stage of "enforcement instead of regulation" in US crypto regulation and the entry into a new stage of clear rules.

This joint guidance document is reportedly built upon Project Crypto, launched in 2025. This project, jointly driven by two regulatory bodies, aims to coordinate regulatory powers and establish a unified classification system for crypto assets. The guidance document is seen by the industry as a "regulatory bridge for crypto assets," providing clear guidance not only on crypto industry behavior, judicial analysis, and enforcement policies, but also offering immediate compliance clarity for entrepreneurs and investors before Congress moves forward with bipartisan market structure legislation. Its compliance basis is more stable and authoritative than previous employee-level guidance.
It is worth noting that the document divides crypto assets into five categories, clarifies the regulatory jurisdiction of different assets such as digital goods and digital securities, and clarifies the compliance boundaries of common crypto activities such as mining, staking, and airdrops, thus clearing away key obstacles for institutional entry and industry compliance innovation.


