The latest cryptocurrency asset classification plan proposed by the SEC Chairman is not a relaxation of regulation, but rather a carefully designed industry transformation scheme. It attempts to delineate boundaries and set thresholds for the chaotic crypto market under the guise of "exemptions," ultimately bringing decentralized financial experiments under the jurisdiction of traditional finance. This classification system is less about "promoting innovation" and more about filtering out "innovations that can be regulated." What it changes is not the existence of regulation, but who will qualify to sit at the table in the future and how they will do so.
Reshaping the Rules: The Cost of Moving from Chaos to Order
At the core of the event is the SEC Chairman's proposal to establish a clear token classification system that exempts four specific types of crypto assets from stringent securities law regulation. On the surface, this appears to be an olive branch extended by the regulatory body to the industry, especially after a long gray period of "regulation through enforcement," where any clear rules are seen as a positive by the market. The community's optimistic sentiment and some KOLs' predictions of a "regulatory watershed in 2025" reflect this desire for certainty.
However, the real conflict lies beneath the surface. This is not a simple binary opposition of "regulation vs. freedom," but rather a surgical reconstruction of market structure by power. The past crypto market was a chaotic jungle with low barriers and high risks, where innovation coexisted with scams. The SEC's classification plan essentially aims to use the scalpel of compliance costs to excise its uncontrollable parts and nurture its controllable parts. The so-called "exemption" is not a free pass, but a ticket to participate in the new game, and the cost of purchasing this ticket will keep the vast majority of native, small crypto projects out.
The Game of Power: Realigning Interests
In this game, the motivations of each participant are clear and direct.
Regulators: Incorporate rather than eradicate. The SEC's goal has never been to completely destroy the crypto industry, but to bring it into a controllable financial system. An entirely lawless crypto market is a political failure, while a stifled market means missing strategic opportunities for financial innovation. By establishing a classification system, the SEC transforms from a passive "enforcer" to an active "rule maker." They provide a narrow but clear compliance path, forcing market participants to actively align with regulation for survival and development. This is a governance method that is more cost-effective and efficient.
Institutional Capital: From off-market observation to on-market harvesting. Traditional financial institutions are the staunchest supporters of this new regulation. They possess substantial capital, top legal teams, and mature compliance frameworks, which are burdens in the old crypto world but become unbeatable moats in the new compliant world. The higher the compliance threshold, the more advantageous it is for them, as it effectively filters out grassroots competitors who cannot bear compliance costs. The recent outflow of funds from Bitcoin ETFs is merely a short-term fluctuation in market sentiment and does not change the long-term strategy of institutional capital preparing to "enter with a license." They are waiting for such a moment: clear rules and weak opponents.
Crypto Community and Developers: A Divided Future. The community's short-term optimistic sentiment (FOMO) is understandable, as clear regulatory expectations can bring incremental funds and drive up asset prices. However, for true believers in decentralization and developers, this is a difficult choice. Accepting "exemptions" may mean sacrificing core values such as censorship resistance and anonymity, transforming DeFi protocols into "on-chain fintech" products that comply with regulatory requirements. Refusing compliance may risk being completely abandoned by the mainstream market, exchanges, and capital, becoming an ignored "zombie chain."
Transmission Mechanism: How Compliance Costs Become Market Filters
The power of this classification system is transmitted to the entire industry through a core mechanism: the barrierization of compliance costs.
To qualify for "exemption," a project will no longer be merely a competition at the code level, but a contest of comprehensive strength. It requires:
- High legal costs: Hiring top law firms to issue legal opinions proving that its token model does not fall under securities is itself a significant expense.
- Stringent technical audits: To meet regulatory requirements for safety and transparency, projects must undergo multiple rounds of expensive smart contract audits.
- Ongoing operational costs: Establishing anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) systems means giving up permissionless features and bearing ongoing operational and data management costs.
This process acts like a filter. Only those projects that receive support from top VCs, have clear team backgrounds, and possess well-defined business models can afford the ticket to compliance paradise. Meanwhile, anonymous, experimental, community-driven projects that truly embody the spirit of decentralization will be eliminated in the first round of screening. The so-called "DeFi summer" may reappear, but it will be a scrutinized and tamed summer, where the protagonists are no longer anonymous "farmers," but Wall Street fund managers.
Essential Insight: The Paradigm Shift from Permissionless to Permissioned
Peeling away the layers of interest entanglements, we see a profound transformation in the underlying logic of the industry: a shift from permissionless to permissioned paradigms.
The birth of the crypto industry stemmed from a rebellion against the centralized and permissioned nature of the traditional financial system. The core allure of Bitcoin and Ethereum lies in the fact that anyone can participate in the network, conduct transactions, and deploy code without anyone's approval. This is a form of equality in rights granted by technology.
However, the SEC's classification plan, along with global regulatory trends, is systematically dismantling this foundation. In the future, whether a crypto project can succeed may no longer depend on its technological innovation or community activity, but rather on whether it can obtain the "permission" of regulatory bodies. The entry rights to financial activities are quietly being returned from code and consensus to regulators and capital. The crypto industry is evolving from an open, bottom-up ecosystem to a closed, top-down licensing industry. This is undoubtedly a departure from its original spirit.
Industry Projection: Compliance Enclosure and the "Dark Forest"
Looking ahead, the crypto industry may experience significant differentiation, forming two parallel worlds:
World One: The Compliant "Enclosure." In this world, there exists "compliant crypto" that has been filtered by regulation and deeply bound to traditional finance. Here, there are Bitcoin spot ETFs, regulated stablecoins, fully KYC-compliant DeFi protocols, and tokenized real-world assets (RWA). It will attract massive mainstream capital and possess a huge market scale, but innovation will be confined within the regulatory framework. Finance here will be more efficient and transparent, but also more centralized and controllable.
World Two: The Native "Dark Forest." Outside the enclosure, those protocols and communities that adhere to permissionless and anti-censorship principles will retreat to more obscure corners. They will continue to explore cutting-edge technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, fully on-chain decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and privacy protocols. This world will maintain the original spirit of the crypto industry, but may also face liquidity depletion, sluggish user growth, and ongoing regulatory crackdowns, becoming a niche, high-risk experimental ground.
For practitioners, choosing which path to take is not only a consideration of business strategy but also a choice of values. The SEC's classification plan is not the end, but the beginning. It marks the official end of the golden age of the crypto industry's wild growth, and a new era centered on rules, power, and capital has arrived. The issues facing the industry are no longer about how to evade regulation, but how much of the original ideals can be retained while accepting regulation.
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