The SEC says that most memecoins are not securities, are akin to collectibles, and memecoin purchasers and holders are not protected by federal securities laws
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance Thursday evening saying it does not deem most meme coins securities under U.S. federal law.
Context & Ripple Effects
The guidance aligns the SEC with the White House crypto czar’s earlier description of memecoins and NFTs as collectibles rather than financial instruments. It marks a notable change in emphasis from the agency’s earlier position that the existing securities framework could govern crypto-asset securities.
It also extends the SEC’s asset-by-asset classification path: Bitcoin and Ether were previously treated as outside the securities category, while many ICOs were not. The key distinction here is that the agency pairs the classification with an explicit warning that buyers lack federal securities-law protections.
First-order effects
- Most memecoin issuers, promoters, exchanges and holders gain clearer SEC guidance that the agency does not view the typical token in this category as a security.
- Purchasers cannot rely on federal securities-law protections for the memecoins covered by the guidance, putting greater weight on their own risk assessment and on non-securities-law remedies where available.
Second-order effects
- Trading venues and token projects can use the guidance to reassess listing, disclosure and compliance decisions for memecoins, while still needing to distinguish tokens whose facts may differ from the “most” covered by the statement.
- The classification sharpens a market divide between tokens framed as collectible or community assets and crypto offerings that may still trigger securities analysis, rather than creating a single rule for all digital assets.
Third-order effects
- If this asset-specific approach persists, U.S. crypto oversight is likely to develop through categories—collectibles, stablecoins, commodities and securities—rather than a uniform treatment of tokens. Later joint SEC-CFTC classifications of several digital-asset categories point in that direction.
- The trade-off is structural: more certainty about which products sit outside securities law can coexist with fewer federal investor-protection tools for buyers in those categories, increasing the importance of clear boundaries and consumer-risk disclosure.
The trend: U.S. crypto policy is moving toward narrower, category-based classifications that separate non-security digital assets from offerings subject to securities oversight.