U.S. financial regulators have issued the most sweeping crypto classification framework in American history.
XRP, Shiba Inu, Dogecoin, Cardano, and a dozen other digital assets have been formally designated as non-securities, ending years of legal uncertainty that shadowed the industry.
On March 17, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission jointly issued a 68-page interpretive rule.
It establishes a formal taxonomy for crypto assets under federal securities law for the first time.
The rule supersedes the SEC’s 2019 framework and is the most comprehensive federal guidance since the 2017 DAO Report.
The two agencies classified 16 crypto assets as digital commodities: XRP, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Avalanche, Polkadot, Stellar, Hedera, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Tezos, Bitcoin Cash, Aptos, and Algorand.
A Five-Category Framework
The joint SEC-CFTC interpretation introduces five token categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities.
The first three are treated as non-securities by default. Only tokenized versions of traditional financial instruments such as stocks represented on-chain remain under full securities law.
The SEC defines digital commodities as assets whose value is intrinsically linked to the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system.
The Howey Test still applies, but the guidance clarifies when a token can enter or exit investment contract status.
What Regulators Said
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins called it a turning point.
“After more than a decade of uncertainty, this interpretation will provide market participants with a clear understanding of how the Commission treats crypto assets,” he said.
“This is what regulatory agencies are supposed to do: draw clear lines in clear terms.”
CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig added: “For far too long, American builders, innovators, and entrepreneurs have awaited clear guidance on the status of crypto assets under federal law.”
The Road to This Decision
The ruling traces back to a Trump executive order establishing a Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.
The group’s July 2025 report urged the SEC and CFTC to act using existing authority. Atkins launched “Project Crypto” shortly after.
It became a joint SEC-CFTC initiative in January 2026, and Tuesday’s rule is its first formal output.
For XRP, the ruling ends a six-year legal battle.
The SEC confirmed that XRP, the fourth-largest token by market capitalization, will no longer be treated as a security closing a dispute that began with the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs in 2020.
An Important Caveat
The ruling does not grant blanket immunity. The SEC’s guidance makes clear that a non-security token can still fall under an investment contract if sold with promises tied to the issuer’s managerial efforts.
That status is not permanent, however. Once buyers can no longer reasonably expect profits from the issuer’s efforts, the token separates from the contract. One firm boundary remains: any original offering that should have been registered does not become law retroactively because the token later separated from that contract.
