SEC Sends Crypto Custody Rule Rewrite to White House on Aug. 25

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission submitted a proposed rewrite of its custody rules to the White House on Aug. 25, 2026, moving one step closer to telling investment advisers exactly how they may hold crypto assets for clients. The filing, logged with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs inside the Office of Management and Budget, was independently reported by Cointelegraph and The Block, whose headlines both confirm the submission this week. CoinDesk framed the same move as a revival of a custody proposal the prior administration never managed to finalize.

That three-outlet overlap is the confirmed core of this story. The finer details, including the exact legal basis and the political backdrop, currently trace back to a single fully accessible report.

What the filing actually covers

According to the SEC’s regulatory agenda, cited by Cointelegraph, the agency is weighing amendments under both the Investment Advisers Act and the Investment Company Act. The changes would set out how advisers and registered funds may hold client assets, crypto included, while staying inside existing custody obligations.

The text of the proposal itself has not been made public. OIRA and the wider OMB can request edits before returning it to the SEC. Only after that round trip would commissioners vote on whether to release it for public comment.

A second try after the 2023 attempt

CoinDesk’s framing adds context the other two reports do not spell out directly: in 2023, under a different SEC leadership, the agency tried to narrowly restrict where advisers could park client crypto. That attempt did not survive the process. The current version, still undisclosed, is being pursued under Chair Paul Atkins, who took over in 2025 and has steered the commission toward rulemaking rather than enforcement on digital assets, per Cointelegraph.

Cointelegraph, citing Bloomberg, placed the custody filing inside a broader White House push on digital assets while the CLARITY Act market-structure bill sits stalled in the Senate. A cloture vote on that bill is expected once lawmakers return from the August recess in September. That linkage to CLARITY and to Bloomberg’s reporting appears in only one of the three source reports and should be read as single-sourced until corroborated elsewhere.

What remains unverified

Two of the three outlets covering this story returned bot-verification screens rather than article text when checked for this piece, leaving their full reporting unconfirmed beyond the headline and summary lines they published. Those headlines still agree on the essential fact: a custody rule proposal moved to OIRA this week. The scope of the amendments, the 2023 comparison, and the CLARITY Act linkage rest on narrower sourcing and deserve tracking once the SEC’s text becomes public.

No public comment period has opened. The next dated milestone is whatever OMB decides once its review of the filing concludes.

Sources

• coindesk.com
• cointelegraph.com
• theblock.co