The SEC invites crypto world over for a talk.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

Last Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission held the first ever Crypto Roundtable,

a discussion with industry leaders and skeptics to answer a grand question.

How should the SEC regulate crypto?

Of course, the agency under President Donald Trump is taking what many see as a

friendlier approach and has already dropped a number of lawsuits against various crypto exchanges

initiated during the Biden years. Brady Dale is a reporter and author of the Axios Crypto

newsletter. I asked him what the big topic of discussion was last Friday.

Well, the big topic was just how do you characterize crypto assets? You know, the skeptics on

board were like, these are all securities and they should all just be treated like securities.

And that's really complicated and the court should just sort it out. And of course,

if that's the way you do it, it's going to take a really long time because courts aren't fast. And the folks,

the other side were like, it's not fair to lump all of these assets into one bucket. A lot of them do

very different things. And so they were encouraging the SEC to refine their approach to look at,

you know, different assets, different ways. Don't treat diesel trucks like they're pentos, you know, different assets, different ways. Don't treat diesel trucks like their pentos, you know, as a way you might put it in sort of thinking about cars.

So why is this such an important distinction whether or not these digital assets are considered

securities? And what are kind of the arguments in each column?

The big picture of why it's so important is if all crypto assets were securities, they basically

become useless. The folks you make these things don't want to just trade them willy-nilly

forever. They don't want to just bet on number go up forever. They want them to be a part of

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