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ARTICLE · 14 AUGUST 2026

Howey's Cryptonite: A Deep Dive On Digital Asset Classification—Part I

K&L Gates
K&L Gates
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The SEC and CFTC have issued a joint interpretive release establishing a securities taxonomy for crypto-assets, classifying them into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities. This groundbreaking guidance identifies specific crypto-assets like Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana as digital commodities rather than securities, marking a significant shift from the SEC's previous regulation-by-enforcement approach.

United StatesFinance and Banking
Thoreau Bartmann
Thoreau Bartmann
William F. Cole
William F. Cole
Lance Dial
Lance Dial
Sarah V. Riddell
Sarah V. Riddell

On March 17, 2026, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a joint interpretive release estab- lishing a securities taxonomy for crypto-assets (the Taxonomy).1 The Taxonomy is the most significant step yet in fulfilling SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ prom- ise to establish a clear securities law framework as applied to crypto and digital assets. The Taxonomy now serves to help market participants to discern what characteristics the SEC would attribute to a crypto-asset to consider it a security.

Since the widespread adoption of digital assets more than a decade ago, questions have often arisen as to whether certain tokens, cryptocurrencies, non- fungible tokens (NFTs), and other innovative block- chain-based assets are securities. With the exception of Bitcoin (and ambiguously Ether), the SEC has steadfastly refused to answer the question: Is this token a security? Instead, it often has been accused of using a strategy of ad

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