The crypto industry got a one-two punch of regulatory relief proposals on Tuesday from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

The SEC unveiled a proposal for new “Regulation Crypto Assets” rules providing exemptions to the Securities Act of 1933 related to crypto asset investment contracts, according to a Tuesday press release. The plan calls for a one-time exemption that would allow offerings of up to $5 million during a four-year period, and a second provision would allow offerings of up to $75 million during each 12-month period. 

“Regulation Crypto Assets seeks to provide crypto asset entrepreneurs and market participants with clear pathways to raise capital under the federal securities laws,” SEC Chair Paul Atkins said in a statement in the release, which added that the framework is a “key element in our strategy to advance the rule books for the modern era and another step by the Commission to onshore innovation in crypto asset markets for generations to come.”  

As a landmark digital asset bill dubbed the Clarity Act has stalled in Congress, the SEC had been expected to unveil major initiatives related to investment contracts involving crypto assets, Bloomberg News reported last week.   

The SEC’s move drew criticism from accounting columnist and academic Francine McKenna. The Atkins-led SEC “is subverting the legislative process in its proposal, one delayed in voting on the crypto-friendly Clarity Act. This is legislating by agency rulemaking, exactly what Atkins criticized as rulemaking by enforcement in the previous administration,” McKenna wrote in an email.   

Separately on Tuesday, the Financial Accounting Standards Board published proposed new accounting standards that would treat certain digital assets as cash equivalents, teeing up the new guidance for a public comment period ending Nov. 19.  

Under the plan, the definition of cash equivalents — characterized as short-term, highly liquid assets — would remain unchanged, but it could be extended to “certain digital assets, including stablecoins” if they are deemed to have such attributes that keep their value stable as being tied to a fiat currency, according to the proposal.  

The formal step brings the project closer to finalization less than a year after the board voted in October to tackle the stablecoin accounting issue. The board will decide on the new rule’s effective date after it reviews feedback received during the upcoming comment period. 

The stablecoin project drew support from crypto players such as Circle as well as other stakeholders during an agenda consultation last year and gained further momentum after President Donald Trump’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets called for the FASB to take action on it in a July 2025 report. 

“FASB should consider whether to treat payment stablecoins as cash equivalents under GAAP,” the report stated. “Further clarification is required in cases where tokens provide utility or access without clearly enforceable rights — particularly when tied to the future development of a platform.”  

Some accounting experts have expressed concerns about higher risks that the change could pose for investors. While the FASB is not changing the definition of cash equivalents they are changing what is allowed to fall under it, altering the spirit of the definition without altering the letter of it, according to Jack Castonguay, an associate professor of accounting at Hofstra University and a vice president of content development at Surgent. 

“I’m glad the exposure draft didn’t go farther, but I think...allowing stablecoins to fall under cash and cash equivalents even with some guardrails is going too far given recent stablecoin crashes, runs, and collapses,” Castonguay said. 

Under the proposal the FASB set up, companies can use a number of attributes to determine whether their stablecoins meet the liquidity level of cash equivalents. Such assets must give the owner an on-demand contractual cash redemption right, a direct redemption right for a specific amount of cash and be tied to “segregated serve assets held by the issuer on at least a one-to-one basis (relative to the issued and outstanding digital assets in circulation) in short-term, highly liquid assets.”  

Taken together, McKenna said both the FASB and the SEC proposals are part of this administration's strong support for “regularizing” crypto assets on public company balance sheets.