What are the rules for Ethereum in the US?
Still unsettled. The CLARITY Act, the bill meant to set the rules for crypto markets, failed a key Senate vote in September 2026, so for now the rules come from regulators. The SEC and CFTC decide what counts as a security or a commodity, and the Treasury and IRS set the tax treatment. The stories below are the turning points.
Answer reviewed 2026-10-04
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With no law, regulators are acting on their own. The SEC lets approved venues trade tokenized stocks for five years.
The SEC approved conditional relief allowing distributed ledger trading venues to operate without Exchange Act registration, enabling permissioned decentralized finance platforms to list and trade tokenized US securities and ETFs for the first time.
More: ETH Daily · CoinDesk · Decrypt · Federal Register
SEC staff guidance on staking and token buybacks, the kind of rule that now comes from the agency rather than Congress.
The SEC narrows buyback guidance to networks with no central party, sharpening the line between permissioned and decentralized staking systems.
More: The Block · Unchained · The Defiant · Unchained
The tax side. A House committee advances a crypto tax bill with support from both parties.
The bill exempts qualifying crypto fees from gain-or-loss calculations and restricts tax-loss deductions on tokens sold and quickly repurchased.
More: Cointelegraph · Decrypt
Every story, by topic
- The SEC · 14 stories
What the Securities and Exchange Commission says and does about Ethereum.
- CLARITY Act · 6 stories
The US market structure bill, and its path through Congress.
Get the news on Ethereum by email, once a day or once a week. · More questions and topics