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SEC Directs Examiners to Focus on How US Broker-Dealers Are Pitching Crypto
The U.S. securities regulator issued its annual examination priorities on how it’ll keep track of emerging risks. The handling of crypto was one of the highlights.

U.S. broker-dealers and investment advisers that deal in crypto will get extra scrutiny from Securities and Exchange Commission examiners this year, according to the agency’s annual examination priorities announced Tuesday.
The SEC-registered investment firms offering or advising about cryptocurrencies will be a focus. The regulator will make sure the companies “followed their respective standards of care when making recommendations, referrals, or providing investment advice,” according to a statement.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who has long viewed most cryptocurrencies as being securities that need registration, said these priorities for the examination division aim to protect investors “in a time of growing markets, evolving technologies, and new forms of risk.”
The annual priorities differ from last year’s, which included a brief section on crypto that also focused on the “custody arrangements” for digital assets. Registered investment advisors have reportedly been under recent SEC scrutiny about whether they follow custody rules.
Earlier Tuesday, the SEC warned that investors should be wary of the crypto they may be including in their self-administered retirement accounts.
Jesse Hamilton
Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.
