The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is accelerating its efforts to pass cryptocurrency market structure legislation before the end of the year. This comes after a historic backlog emerged during the recent government shutdown, which saw over 900 registration statements flood the commission’s Division of Corporation Finance. To streamline this process, the SEC has implemented several measures to clear the backlog and ensure clarity for issuers. These include automatically applying Section 8(a) provisions for many filings post-shutdown, allowing some filings to go into effect automatically without additional steps. The SEC is actively working with lawmakers on legislation aimed at regulating crypto markets and these measures are expected to expedite approval processes for various tokens and financial instruments like stablecoins, ETFs and blockchain-native equities.