Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said the United States is moving toward “clear rules” for cryptocurrency, arguing that years of regulatory uncertainty are giving way to a more defined framework for digital assets. His remarks come as Washington works through congressional legislation and regulatory initiatives intended to establish clearer boundaries for crypto exchanges, token issuers, stablecoins and decentralized-finance platforms.
In a closely related development, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig explicitly named BTC, ETH, SOL, XLM, XTZ and XRP as examples of digital commodities. The statement provides unusually explicit guidance on how the agency views several of the largest blockchain assets and signals how Washington may divide authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC.
For much of the previous decade, crypto companies operated under securities and commodities laws written before blockchain-based assets existed, creating repeated disputes over whether particular tokens were securities, commodities or something else. The SEC pursued enforcement cases against companies including Ripple, Coinbase, Binance and Gemini, while the CFTC has consistently maintained that Bitcoin and a broader category of digital commodities fall within commodity law.
Winklevoss’s comments carry particular context because Gemini has spent years dealing directly with U.S. regulators. The SEC sued Genesis Global Capital and Gemini in January 2023 over the Gemini Earn lending program, alleging that the arrangement constituted an unregistered securities offering. That case became emblematic of the industry’s broader complaint that crypto companies frequently learned regulators’ interpretations through enforcement actions rather than purpose-built rules.
The inclusion of XRP and Solana is especially significant because both assets were previously central to disputes over when crypto assets fall under U.S. securities law. The SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, alleging that XRP sales constituted unregistered securities offerings. A federal court later distinguished between different types of XRP transactions rather than finding that XRP itself was inherently a security in every circumstance. Solana also appeared in earlier SEC enforcement complaints as an asset the regulator alleged was offered and sold as a security. Selig’s decision to cite SOL as a digital commodity therefore demonstrates how the federal regulatory environment has shifted.
Congress is considering market-structure legislation that could give the CFTC broader authority over spot digital-commodity markets while preserving SEC oversight of crypto assets and transactions that meet securities-law requirements. Stablecoins have also moved into a more defined federal framework, while banking regulators have increasingly clarified how supervised institutions can participate in digital-asset custody, blockchain settlement and related services.
Clearer legislation could increase formal compliance obligations by determining which companies must register, which regulator supervises them, how customer assets must be protected and what disclosure, capital and market-surveillance requirements apply. For established exchanges, that trade-off can still be attractive: regulatory certainty can make it easier to design products, obtain banking relationships and attract institutional investors.
Winklevoss argued that the emerging framework is ultimately about predictability rather than the absence of regulation. The United States still has unresolved questions around DeFi, token classification and the precise division of SEC and CFTC authority. Congressional proposals can also change substantially before becoming law. But the direction is materially different from the enforcement-dominated environment that characterized earlier years.
