The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened a public comment period Tuesday on how to regulate exchange-traded funds built on crypto assets and prediction markets, three concrete questions that will shape whether these products can reach U.S. investors through the agency's faster standardized listing path.
The SEC is asking: Do crypto and prediction-market ETFs even qualify as investment companies under the Investment Company Act? How should they be regulated? And can the agency's current registration pipeline handle them? Public feedback runs for 60 days once the request appears in the Federal Register.
The review centers on the SEC's standardized listing process, which lets certain ETFs bypass individual petitions for relief and list through an automated route. That system narrowed dramatically under Gary Gensler but began widening again after Paul Atkins became chairman in April 2025. The open question is whether that faster path should extend to funds holding assets that fall outside the Investment Company Act's definition of a security.
Atkins said in a statement that the request seeks "input from the public on how the U.S. ETF market can continue to grow and innovate while serving investors effectively." The comment period reflects real regulatory uncertainty: the agency has cleared bitcoin and ether ETFs, then moved on to tokens including Solana and Dogecoin under the current leadership. Prediction-market ETFs sit in a different category. The SEC has yet to approve any and has rejected multiple applications.
input from the public on how the U.S. ETF market can continue to grow and innovate while serving investors effectively.
The numbers tell part of the story. Total ETF assets reached more than $12 trillion at the end of 2025, up from $4 trillion in 2019, with recent gains heavily driven by crypto products. That growth has outpaced the regulatory framework's ability to keep up, which is why the SEC is now asking the market what rules should apply.
TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg told clients the SEC appears to be laying groundwork to eventually permit "a broader array of ETFs including those based on event contracts, crypto assets and single-stock strategies," a shift he projected could arrive as soon as 2027. For now, the comment period is the agency's first formal step toward that possible shift. What happens next depends partly on who files responses, but also on how Atkins and his team interpret them once the 60 days close.