The U.S. SEC plans to amend broker-dealer rule 15c2-11 to exclude crypto assets from its scope

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today officially proposed amendments to Rule 15c2-11 of the Securities Exchange Act, aiming to clearly limit the scope of this rule to equity securities.

Since its promulgation, this rule has primarily been used to regulate the information collection and review obligations of brokers when publishing quotes in the over-the-counter (OTC) market, with the core purpose of preventing manipulative and fraudulent trading practices in the OTC stock market. SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins stated that regulatory rules should match the asset classes to which they apply, and this amendment aims to clarify the regulatory obligations for publishing quotes and to specify that Rule 15c2-11 is always applicable only to equity securities.