I sat down with the new SEC Crypto Task Force, they are legit

By William Entriken

4 minutes

After years of silence, a game-changing crypto meeting.

As someone who’s presented to regulators & central banks across EMEA, China & beyond, and the lead author of ERC-721—the standard that powers NFTs—and, I’ve spent years navigating the global crypto regulatory landscape. But in the US, it was always a dead end: ghosted emails, unclear jurisdictions, and outright antagonism that drove innovation offshore. That changed dramatically with the new SEC Crypto Task Force. I just sat down with them, and they are legit—collaborative, knowledgeable and genuinely invested in making American crypto thrive.

Sharing here my experience, how this went versus my prior experiences trying to engage the US government regarding crypto projects and how you can connect.

The old US crypto nightmare vs. the new hope

US regulators have historically been inaccessible and unhelpful compared to their international counterparts. In Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and even China, I’ve participated in productive policy roundtables and presentations that led to real progress: reasonable crypto regulations worldwide, NFTs exempted from securities laws in most places, and China’s national and Shanghai governments targeting NFTs for investment in their 14th Five-Year Plan.

Then Donald Trump took office as the 47th president, and everything shifted. The SEC Crypto Task Force was announced hours after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, led by Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, first announced 2025-01-25. My personal experience with them gives me real hope: this could be the inflection point where US policy catches up, fostering collaborative, common-sense regulation that to help the US catch pace.

How it went

Our meeting was 2025-06-10, with the option to meet in-person or online. They allocated up to 50 minutes to meet and we were allowed to send detailed documents ahead of time. Overall our meeting was less than 40 minutes, barely a lunch break, but it was very productive.

This is the holy grail crypto project.

I had started by presenting a half-cooked, very basic crypto project. In the world of US crypto regulation, there is a strong determinant “did your entity facilitate the transaction / or was the transaction processed by disinterested automata?” And basically, I leaned on that classification hard to see if I could legally start a business that holds shares of private companies and creates crypto tokens… all without registering as a broker-dealer.

As we went through the project, I was very open about what we are trying to do–avoiding the broker-dealer registration, doing the minimum necessary tasks to comply with rules. And we went through scenarios in rapid succession. (“What if we added a bunch of stuff so that this is not the primary business operation?” “What if we remove that part, is that germane to this meeting the test?”) And the SEC team was super helpful in telling us which parts of which rules we were brushing up against. (“See where the ‘40 act says….” “That sounds more like a security-based swap if you do it that way.”)

It was like walking into a room of experienced entrepreneurs, and doing back-of-the-napkin planning with them… the best collaboration you can get!

At the end of the session, we clocked in under 40 minutes. We ended the call early. No need to discuss further once we got through everything. And they did appreciate this. I left with plenty of homework, references and other projects to study.

The task force did not hesitate in answering questions from all directions. They brought their own ideas I was not even thinking about.

I had asked about upcoming regulations (released, but not yet effective), recently passed law and even laws on the hill (i.e. voted but not signed, in committee). The Crypto Task Force had no problem talking about these and being as helpful as possible.

Special thanks

Shoutout to the task force team who made this possible. Here is who they invited to the meeting:

Quite a competent contingent!

The new crypto government vs. before

One can’t help but notice that the SEC Crypto Task Force was stood up hours after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States.

During years prior, I have done policy roundtables and presentations across EMEA and China. They have been very welcoming and productive. And the end result of this is:

  1. We have reasonable crypto regulations in most of the world.
  2. NFTs are exempt from securities regulations in most of the world.
  3. China’s Shanghai and national government included NFTs as a targeted investment and study area for their 14th Five-Year Plan (十四五).

During the same time in the US, I was able to collaborate with NIST on a paper and meet with the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. But when I tried to connect with the SEC and the CFTC (through LabCFTC, CFTC2.0), I got nothing. Internally, they were not clear on who regulated what.

Gary Gensler was doing to crypto what Rodrigo Duterte did to drugs in the Philippines.

In the US, the difference is night and day. With the “day” starting 2025-01-20.

Outcome

We have a path forward, and I think it will be possible to operate a crypto business, doing interesting things, legally in the US. I estimate we will not need to resort to “near-shore” operations like how OpenSea launched the OpenSea Foundation in the Cayman Islands to create a SEA token or how Robinhood launched its USDG stablecoin initially from Singapore and its Stock Tokens under Lithuania jurisdiction.

Related: see also where I interview regional officials, including Matis Mäeker, about Lithuania anti-money laundering on crypto.

I’m working hard to do business in the US, and do it legally. Don’t let the US fall behind on innovation. This point was not lost on the Task Force team, and we are all together in a make-or-break time.

How you can connect

First, have a serious project, not just a whitepaper. Have counsel. Be prepared to discuss your project in detail. If you have already considered to do bunisess “near-shore” instead of in the US, bring your notes from that analysis.

You can bring counsel to your meeting. Or you can just bring your executives or your business develpment team.

Use the SEC Crypto Task Force official meeting request form and prepare all your documents.

I was able to secure our first meeting within two weeks of reaching out.

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Comments

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