The Blockchain Association filed a comment letter with the SEC this week backing the agency's proposed 'Regulation Crypto Assets,' but with a list of changes attached. The trade group's biggest ask: double the crypto startup exemption cap to $10 million. It also wants both offering caps in the proposal raised, not just the one aimed at new issuers.
The letter lands while the rule is still in its comment window, which makes this an attempt to shape the text before it's locked. The group isn't opposing the regulation. It's arguing the current thresholds are too tight to be useful.
The $10 million ask
The startup exemption is the piece of the proposal that matters most to smaller issuers, since it's the path that lets them raise money without the full registration machinery. At its current size, the Blockchain Association argues, the cap doesn't leave enough room for a token sale to get off the ground. Doubling it to $10 million is the group's headline request.
It didn't stop there. The letter asks the SEC to raise both offering caps in the proposed regulation, not only the startup carve-out. That's a broader push than the headline number suggests — it touches the other offering limit in the rule as well.
Howey, written into the text
The second request is more structural. The Blockchain Association urged the SEC to write Howey guidance directly into the rule. Right now, whether a token is a security is largely a case-by-case question, and the group wants that analysis baked into the regulation itself rather than left to enforcement or ad hoc staff guidance.
That's a familiar complaint from the industry. Putting Howey language in the rule would give issuers something to point to, instead of reading tea leaves from past settlements. Whether the SEC takes that up is a separate question — agencies tend to guard their flexibility on how they apply existing case law.
Third parties and tokens already trading
The final ask in the letter is the most unusual. The Blockchain Association wants the SEC to allow third parties to file for tokens that are already trading. That would open a path for someone other than the original issuer — a exchange, a foundation, a consortium — to make the regulatory filing for an asset that's already on the market.
If the SEC adopts it, that could matter for a long tail of tokens that launched without a clean filing and now have no obvious party to step forward. The letter doesn't name specific tokens. It makes the case at the policy level.
What's actually next
The comment letter is one input in a process the SEC controls. The agency hasn't said whether it will revise the caps, and it hasn't committed to the Howey language or the third-party filing provision. The proposal still has to move through the rest of its comment period before any of this gets decided.
The concrete thing to watch is whether the SEC's next version of the rule reflects any of the three asks — the $10 million cap, the Howey text, or the third-party filing path. If none of them show up, the letter will have been filed into a void. If even one does, it's a signal the agency is listening to the trade group on the details.
