The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on 31 July launched “Project Crypto,” a commission-wide drive to rewrite securities rules and migrate portions of America’s financial markets onto blockchain infrastructure. Announcing the initiative at an America First Policy Institute conference in Washington, Chair Paul Atkins said the program aligns with White House goals of making the United States the “crypto capital of the world.” He directed SEC staff to modernize decades-old regulations and deliver a comprehensive rule-set for on-chain markets within the next year. Atkins said the effort will create tailored disclosures, exemptions and safe harbors that would allow brokers to handle both traditional securities and non-security crypto assets side by side. The chair signaled room for activities previously discouraged in the U.S.—including initial coin offerings, airdrops, staking and decentralized-finance services—while pledging to protect the right to self-custody digital assets, which he called “a core American value.” He added that, in his view, “most crypto assets are not securities,” underscoring a policy shift away from the enforcement stance of prior leadership. The initiative builds on signals delivered earlier in the month. On 18 July Atkins revealed the SEC was considering an “innovation exemption” to reduce regulatory frictions for tokenization, and on 21 July he declared that Ether is “not a security,” removing a key point of legal uncertainty for the second-largest cryptocurrency. Together, the moves are intended to clear a regulatory path for Wall Street and Silicon Valley firms that are preparing large-scale tokenization of traditional assets and broader adoption of blockchain-based trading platforms.