A16z Crypto and Advocacy Group Call for NFT, Defi App Safe Harbor at the dry

Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) and the Defense Defense Organization Fund asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to set up a security cooling program for non-fascinable tokens (NFT) and decentralized financing (DEFI) of the registration of the agency.

In a Wednesday letter to the SEC Commissioner and at the head of the Crypto Hester Peirce working group, in A16z and the DEFI group, said that they followed the working group of American president Donald Trump on digital assets to “relieve certain service providers of the law on the registration of the broker.”

In July, the President of the SEC, Paul Atkins, also said that he had ordered the agency staff to “update the outset rules and regulations of the outdated agencies” concerning certain crypto and blockchain requests.

A port of all security, in terms of dry regulations, would allow many companies offering products and services related to the crypto to avoid application measures. The Commission and individual investors previously brought civil proceedings against cryptocurrency companies for having operated as unregistered dealers, including Cumberland DRW, Coinbase and Kraken.

Andreessen Horowitz, law, dry
Letter to Hester Peirce de A16z and Defi Education Fund. Source: A16Z

In relation: The SEC Commissioner said that the laws on “security shelters” have aggravated ICO problems

“The principal principle of Harbor Safe is that only applications that do not generate the risks that the regulatory regime of the broker of the exchange law has been designed to contact should be eligible; in such cases, registration as a broker under the law on exchange is unknown and inappropriate,” said the letter to the dry, adding: adding: adding: adding: adding: adding: adding: adding: adding: adding:

“A security port would provide an essential regulatory clarity, would preserve the authority of the Commission to supervise high-risk activities and to ensure that developers can build in the United States without fear of the poor application of the inappropriate legal categories for modern software infrastructures.”

The proposed dry change policy followed A16Z sending a letter in March to Peirce, detailing the recommendations for a NFT security port to the agency. The company also said in a separate letter that the Commission “could take the following measures” to set up safe ports for air parachts and network tokens.

What companies could be affected by the “security port” proposal?

In June, the SEC indicated that around 3,340 brokers with 6.4 billions of dollars in assets had registered with the agency in 2024. The agency noted at the time that there had been a “consolidation of industry, with a declining fraction of market players responsible for a larger asset pool”.

The Commission established the Category of Courtiers for Special Use (SPBD) in December 2020 for the custody of digital asset titles. However, the SEC clarified in May that the designation of the SPBD was not compulsory for “brokers who sought to have cryptographic assets of the customer who are titles”, adding that the standard requirements would apply both to engage both in digital assets and traditional titles.