The SEC announced on Tuesday that it had filed a proposal titled “Regulation Crypto Assets”, giving crypto entrepreneurs a clearer, considerably lighter route to raising capital under federal securities law, according to the press release published by the regulator.
It is the agency’s first formal rulemaking dedicated to crypto asset offerings, building on broader interpretive guidance the SEC issued in March, and would spare qualifying issuers the costly registration process required of most public offerings.
At the centre of the proposal sit two new exemptions.
The “startup exemption” would let an issuer raise up to $5 million (€4.3mn) over a four year period without registering the offering.
A second, the “fundraising exemption”, would permit raises of up to $75 million (€64.7mn) within any 12 month stretch, though issuers relying on it would still need to publish financial statements and meet ongoing reporting duties.
Both routes ask companies to give investors narrative, principles based disclosures, rather than the dense legal filings typically demanded of public listings.
The proposal also sets out a conditional safe harbour that could eventually place certain tokens outside the legal definition of a security, once an issuer has finished, or permanently abandoned, the managerial efforts it promised investors.
It would also override conflicting state registration rules for offerings made under the exemptions, sparing issuers from having to comply separately with individual state securities regimes.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the package as a “minimum effective dose” of oversight, protecting investors while leaving builders maximum room to innovate.
The reception of the proposal has been largely warm.
Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, said the move finally delivers the tailored regulatory clarity the sector has sought for years. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, likewise praised the plan, pledging support in helping the industry expand within the US rather than abroad.
However, the proposal is far from final. It stays open for public comment for 60 days once published in the Federal Register, meaning its provisions could still change, or be scrapped, before any final rule is adopted.
The SEC’s move comes roughly a week and a half after the US Senate left Washington for its summer recess without advancing the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633), the industry’s flagship bill, which would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
US Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a cloture motion on the bill on 7 August, but lawmakers departed before a vote was held. That motion is now due to come up again on 15 September, a procedural hurdle rather than a final vote, once senators return.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has argued on more than one occasion that only Congress can deliver a lasting, “future-proofed” framework able to survive changes in political leadership, and the Commission says it still backs the bill’s passage.
Even so, with its timetable slipping into autumn, the regulator appears to have decided not to wait, instead using powers it already holds to offer the industry some certainty while lawmakers prepare to resume the debate next month.
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The White House said the Trump administration is continuing to work on the best structure for a “U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve” and “digital asset stockpile” to deliver on President Trump’s vision.
According to a Bloomberg report, the Bitcoin (
Halfway through a turbulent year, a clear pattern has emerged across global markets: anything tied to the physical build-out of AI has soared, while several other assets that investors traditionally turn to in uncertain times have stumbled.
War in the Middle East, political upheaval and an oil-price spike formed the backdrop, yet stock markets in several regions still pushed to fresh record highs.
According to Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, companies on the receiving end of the AI spending boom were the standout investments of the first half, while Bitcoin proved “a shocker” and gold lost its shine.
It is, Coatsworth noted, a remarkable run of events for only half a year’s worth of trading.
The most spectacular gains came from an unglamorous corner of the technology world: the firms that make memory chips.
As demand for AI computing collided with tight supply, prices surged and took shares with them. SanDisk led the US market with a gain of over 850% in six months, while Western Digital, Micron Technology and Seagate Technology all more than tripled in value, a pace of return that would ordinarily take many years to achieve.
The driver is the vast quantity of high-speed memory and storage needed to train and run AI systems as the largest technology companies race to expand their data centres.
Other US equities that soared on the back of the AI trade include Intel, Dell, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Applied Materials, which all rose between 150% and 280% year to date.
The rush also lifted emerging markets, where Asian chipmakers such as TSMC and SK Hynix carry heavy weight, helping South Korea’s KOSPI double in value, Japan’s Nikkei 225 climb roughly 40% and the MSCI Emerging Markets index rise by around 27%.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 gained 7% in the first half of the year, France’s CAC 40 rose 5%, while Germany’s DAX gained 2%. Meanwhile, the MSCI India index fell 5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 6%.
Notably, the memory rally has begun to unwind in recent days, with several of the same names caught in a sharp technology sell-off.
The flipside was brutal for yesterday’s winners.
Previous AI darlings Meta and Microsoft were left behind, down 14% and 24% respectively on a total-return basis, as heavy AI spending turned the technology giants into more capital-hungry businesses and investors stopped paying a premium for them.
Microsoft now trades at its cheapest level in a decade, leaving both it and Meta valued more modestly than McDonald’s, an outcome few would have predicted at the height of the “Magnificent 7” craze.
Elsewhere, the assets many expected to lead disappointed.
Gold took investors on a volatile ride. After surging to a record high of $5,594.82 an ounce on 29 January, the precious metal lost around 28% from its peak despite the geopolitical turmoil that would normally send investors flocking to safe-haven assets. Instead, its appeal was undermined by higher bond yields and cash rates, which offer an income that a gold bar cannot.
Bitcoin fared worse still, falling 28% since the start of the year as enthusiasm for crypto drained away and money rotated towards technology shares instead.
In the UK, takeovers did much of the heavy lifting.
Six FTSE 100 companies, among them Glencore, Schroders and Segro, attracted bid interest in the first half, a sign that buyers still see value in British blue chips even after a three-year re-rating.
Housebuilders such as Persimmon struggled against a sluggish property market, while tech-adjacent names like Experian and RELX were swept up in fears about AI disruption.
One trade that conspicuously cooled was defence.
After a storming 2025, the likes of BAE Systems, Germany’s Rheinmetall and America’s Palantir all gave ground, as the good news on rising military budgets looked fully priced in and investors drifted elsewhere.
This article does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research and invest according to your specific circumstances.
Bitcoin crashes, but odds turn darker as MSTR, RKLB lead crypto-stocks bloodbath
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