SEC and CFTC jointly classify Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Stellar, Tezos, and XRP as digital commodities

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's chairman has named Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Stellar, Tezos, and XRP as digital commodities. For an industry that spent years arguing over what its biggest tokens actually are, that is a short sentence with a long backstory.

The classification places these assets on the commodity side of the US regulatory divide. That side is supervised by the CFTC, not the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The tokens are part of a broader group identified in a joint interpretive release from the SEC and CFTC, unveiled on March 17, 2026. That guidance labeled 16 major digital assets as "digital commodities," which effectively moved them out of the securities classification.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig presented the guidance together at the DC Blockchain Summit.

The release did more than name names. It organized digital assets into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities.

Only the last of those buckets is typically treated as a security under US law, according to the guidance.

The interpretive release also addressed activities such as mining and staking. It did this through interpretive rules rather than new legislation, which means the agencies clarified how they read existing law instead of waiting for Congress to write a new one.