SEC Revives Crypto Custody Rulemaking That Stalled Under Prior Administration

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to resurrect a crypto custody rule that the previous administration was unable to finalise, according to a report from CoinDesk. The effort represents a renewed regulatory attempt to establish binding custody standards for digital assets held on behalf of investors, a question that has remained unresolved at the federal level.

Beyond that framing, the source body contains no further detail: no draft text, no comment period timeline, no named commissioners, and no indication of how the revived proposal differs from its predecessor. What can be said is that a custody rule of this kind, if advanced, would set requirements around how qualifying custodians segregate, safeguard, and account for client crypto holdings, with meaningful downstream consequences for fund managers, broker-dealers, and the platforms that service them.

The likelier read is that this is early-stage rulemaking signalling rather than an imminent proposal, but operators building or relying on institutional custody infrastructure in the United States should treat it as a live policy risk to track. A formalised rule would almost certainly reprice compliance obligations and potentially narrow the field of eligible custodians.