SEC Cancels Reg Crypto Vote: CFTC Steps Up as Power Over Digital Assets Shifts

The SEC canceled its first formal crypto rulemaking vote on the eve of that vote, offered no rescheduled date, and within five days the White House will convene digital asset executives and the CFTC will hold its inaugural digital asset advisory session — a sequence that analysts say signals a deliberate shift in which agency will govern America's crypto industry and under which legal regime, according to the SEC's open meeting cancellation.

The canceled vote would have been the starting gun for "Regulation Crypto," the most ambitious attempt in the SEC's 90-year history to govern digital assets through formal rulemaking rather than enforcement. Its indefinite postponement, on the same week that the CFTC openly advertises its own expanding digital asset agenda, is being read across the industry as more than a scheduling inconvenience.

What Was Canceled: What Was Already Set in Motion Before It Was

The SEC had scheduled an open meeting for August 14 at 10 a.m. ET, where Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda — the agency's all-Republican three-member commission — were expected to vote on whether to formally publish "Regulation Crypto" as a proposed rule. The agency issued a cancellation notice on August 13, one day before the meeting, citing "an unforeseen scheduling issue" with no replacement date announced.