Guidance, proposals, and law are different clocks

Agencies can open a path. Only a statute can close the argument.

The SEC’s August 2026 proposal, Regulation Crypto Assets, and its October custody proposal are formal rulemaking. They are not yet final rules. Other steps — task forces, Project Crypto, joint interpretations, the innovation-relief ideas, the CFTC’s innovation task force and its crypto FAQs — are coordination, guidance or policy. A firm that treats all nine as the same kind of object will build on sand.

The distinction is the whole story. An examiner can use a FAQ on Monday and a court can ignore it on Tuesday. A proposed rule can still change. A statute, if it comes, is what survives a change of chair.