Remarks at the Solana Policy Institute Summit: Washington x Wall Street

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you, Miller Whitehouse-Levine, for your generous introduction. Of course, I should also like to thank the Solana Policy Institute for the invitation to join you today.

Before I go any further, let me offer the required disclaimer that the views I express here are my own as SEC Chairman and not necessarily those of the SEC as an institution or of the other Commissioners.

Cementing America as the Leader in Financial Innovation

This audience, perhaps more than most, understands the moment that we are in-and the choice that lies before us: will we build the future of finance here in America and remain the global leader in crypto innovation, or will we surrender that ground to another nation? I, for one, am emphatically committed to the former-as is our President.

From day one, President Trump has made American financial leadership and innovation the priority. At the SEC, we take that mandate seriously, and Project Crypto is our answer: a comprehensive, agency-wide effort to cement the United States as the Crypto Capital of the World, built rule by rule on a lawful foundation.

Now, I would be remiss not to address the imminent vote set to be taken down the street tomorrow. I have said it many times before, and I will say it again tonight: the U.S. must and will lead the world in financial innovation. To do so, Congress should vote to advance the CLARITY Act and send it to the President's desk as soon as possible.

But let me be equally clear: with or without that legislation, this Administration will deliver for American investors and technological innovators-which is immensely important to our markets and to those who participate in them. Promises were made, and they will be kept. That has been true of the SEC's agenda since the start of my Chairmanship, and true it will remain.

Regulation Crypto Assets

Nowhere is that more evident than in our recently proposed Regulation Crypto Assets-one of the most significant steps that this Commission has ever taken to modernize federal securities regulation and give crypto assets a long-term home in the United States, grounded in our laws. If adopted, this rule would finally give entrepreneurs what they have been denied for more than a decade: the certainty to raise capital in this country to fund their crypto projects using digital assets, without guessing at the law as they go.

Feedback on the proposal is already pouring in, and one key question keeps surfacing above the rest: namely, does the proposal provide sufficient certainty for entrepreneurs who have delivered on the essential managerial efforts that they promised? Or, put more simply, when does a covered investment contract cease to exist? Indeed, this is one critical reason why I am urging Congress to advance the CLARITY Act tomorrow, which addresses the challenge of current law on this topic.

Ultimately, the underlying principle behind Regulation Crypto Assets is to protect investors, while at the same time empowering entrepreneurs to continue contributing once their promised efforts are complete.

Transfer Agent Modernization

To be sure, we must work to modernize yesterday's infrastructure even as we build tomorrow's. Transfer agents, for example, have operated under rules that the SEC has not seriously touched in roughly forty years-rules written for a world of paper stock certificates, hand-delivered by messengers, locked in vaults. As picturesque as those printed certificates may have been, that world is now a museum piece.

Paper certificates are all but extinct, and transfer agents are already evolving to accommodate a future increasingly built on tokenized shares. The SEC should not be the last institution to notice that the world has changed. So, we recently proposed to streamline and modernize our transfer agent rules in part to reflect today's technological reality. I look forward to reviewing public comment-from those in this room and beyond it-on how those rules should evolve to meet the onchain securities moment already arriving.

A Sound Crypto Custody Framework

Now, as consequential as these proposals are, they amount to a stride forward-not a final lap. Much more is on the horizon, including consideration of a proposal to clarify the custody of crypto assets for investment advisers and regulated funds.

Ask anyone in venture capital or asset management what questions continually plague their mind, and you will likely hear two that top the list: first, can an investment adviser custody crypto assets on behalf of its clients, including a regulated fund? And second, can investment advisers instead use a state trust company as custodian for such assets?

Accordingly, I have asked staff to develop a proposal to answer yes to both-under certain circumstances and subject to appropriate conditions. As to self-custody, yes, because for too many assets a qualified third-party custodian simply does not exist yet. And as to state trust companies, yes, because that pathway already works in practice.

Taken together, Regulation Crypto Assets, transfer agent modernization, and a sound crypto custody framework are not three isolated policy initiatives. They are three pillars of a single, rational, and comprehensive regulatory architecture for how crypto assets are issued, traded, transferred, and held under American law-the structural foundation upon which we at the SEC will continue to build.

Conclusion

In closing, I am reminded of the prescient warning inscribed on the interior wall of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial not far from where we gather, from a letter that Jefferson penned to a friend in 1816:

"[L]aws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed… institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Indeed, it is time that we tailored a coat that fits. Should we fail to do so, we risk tokenization and blockchain-based finance becoming another technological frontier whose greatest advances are realized beyond our shores, by people who understand Jefferson's principle better than we do.

By providing regulatory clarity while keeping faithful to our statutory mission, we can ensure that America remains the world's premier destination to build the next generation of financial infrastructure-and remains, as I have pledged, the Crypto Capital of the World.

Thank you.