On July 22, 2026, Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a statement cautioning cryptocurrency market participants against the notion that crypto assets and activities fall outside the scope of the federal securities laws, focusing on the use of: vaults and onchain lending strategies.
Commissioner Peirce’s statement builds on her July 2025 remarks that “tokenized securities are still securities,” reinforcing the SEC’s broader stance that moving financial activities onchain does not, as a general matter, remove these from the scope of the federal securities laws. Commissioner Peirce addressed crypto vaults, which use smart contracts to allocate user assets to yield-generating activities, like staking and lending. In her comments, she distinguished among a variety of structures. Some rely on smart contracts and involve no discretion in relation to asset allocation, but others give a person or group discretion. To the extent that a party has discretion regarding asset allocation, which might include deciding on yield-generating activities for the vault, the timing of investing and reallocating or rebalancing invested assets, etc., these activities may raise investment management questions. The Commissioner’s comments also addressed onchain lending strategies, which allow participants to deposit assets into systems that lend deposited assets to borrowers for a fee. Here too, there are a variety of lending programs, including some that involve charging borrowers a fee for managing a strategy relating to rates, loan-to-value limits or other criteria. Depending on the features of such a program, these may give rise to securities law considerations.
The Commissioner notes that the securities law considerations may include issues arising under the Investment Company Act and the Investment Advisers Act. Whether a particular vault or lending strategy falls within the SEC’s regulatory scope depends on the specific facts and circumstances of the structure and operations. Commissioner Peirce encouraged market participants engaged in these activities to work with the SEC on how to serve participants in compliance with the federal securities laws and welcomed their input. The full statement is linked here.