The SEC has delivered its rewrite of the custody rules for crypto assets to the White House, the formal checkpoint before the agency can publish a proposal and open it for comment. The draft, titled "Amendments to the Custody Rules" and tracked as RIN 3235-AN46, reached the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on Tuesday. The filing is labeled economically significant and carries a deregulatory designation under Executive Order 14192.
The agency's stated aim is to clarify how investment advisers and investment companies can custody crypto assets for clients, and to remove burdens from provisions it considers outdated. The Unified Agenda targets a notice of proposed rulemaking in October. That is a planning target, not a statutory deadline, and the unpublished text can still change during review.
The qualified custodian question
Everything hangs on one definition. Under existing rules, a qualified custodian is typically a bank, a savings association, a registered broker-dealer, a futures commission merchant, or certain foreign financial institutions. Self-custody, hardware wallets, and non-custodial software do not fit. Whether crypto-native arrangements such as multi-signature setups, staking, and on-chain lending can qualify, and how surprise examinations and independent verification would work for blockchain assets, is what the industry will read first when the text appears.
This is the second attempt. The February 2023 safeguarding proposal, written under former Chair Gary Gensler, would have expanded the custody rule to all client assets and added segregation and insolvency protections. Chair Paul Atkins formally withdrew it in June 2025, saying any future action would require a new proposal. This week's filing is that proposal entering the pipeline.
How it fits the August rulemaking stack
Custody is the second crypto rulemaking the SEC has moved this month. On 18 August it submitted "Regulation Crypto Assets," a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto, with comments due 20 October. In parallel, the Senate's cloture vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is set for 15 September, and CFTC Chair Selig has threatened unilateral rulemaking if the bill fails. The SEC is, in effect, writing rules in the vacuum Congress has left. Our coverage of the GENIUS Act comment fight shows the same split between banks, exchanges, and offshore issuers.
What happens next is procedural. OIRA review is generally limited to 90 days, with one possible 30-day extension, though historical averages have run anywhere from about 50 to 79 days. After review, the Commission votes, publishes the proposal, and opens a comment period of at least 60 days. Nothing changes for advisers or funds until then. The signal still matters: after years of enforcement-driven uncertainty, custody modernization is now in the White House review queue, with crypto assets named in the first paragraph of the justification.