Latest in Blockchain | December 3, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update. It's Wednesday. How about that. Let’s dive in.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory

We talk about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its current chair Paul Atkins, and one of its commissioners Hester Peirce often. This is because the SEC is an important regulator for on-chain assets. Its importance as a regulator for on-chain assets comes in at least two forms:

1. What it chooses to regulate. If the SEC thinks it should regulate something, because it finds it to be a security, that thing either needs to follow securities law or go into a court battle with the SEC to reject that it is a security. It’s a burden. There are risks.
2. How it operates with respect to the things it has decided to regulate. The SEC can pay attention to something, and write clear rules, or it can leave ambiguity. It can expend more or less effort going after people for suspected violations of various types. It can set forward guidance that, while having no real legal effect, can change how people operate.

In 2025, the SEC has been making a lot of decisions on what it regulates that Crypto Twitter likes. It has also been saying a lot of things about how it will operate that Crypto Twitter likes. There’s a meeting tomorrow, there’s the chair’s token taxonomy, there are no-action letters, there’s favorable discussion of stock tokenization. But there are many things where the specific rules, the paper processes, have not caught up to the public commentary by SEC leadership and the expectations that stem from that public commentary.

Anyway, the SEC’s chair went on CNBC and said this:

“We’re working with Congress and we’re providing what we call technical assistance to them regarding legislation to make sure they’re staying on what makes sense and meshes with other laws and whatnot. But we’ll see. I can’t prognosticate [on the timeline for legislation]. But we have enough authority to drive forward. I’m looking forward to having an innovation exemption that we’ve been talking about. We’ll be able to get that out in a month or so is what I’m hoping…We will be able to forge forward with the crypto area and make sure that we are able to embrace this new area of innovation that for too long the United States basically has just pushed back against. I’m looking forward to having rules that are focused on helping that sector of the economy move forward.”

Crypto Twitter was excited. That “month or so” mattered to people. It’s not technically a specific timeline, but it’s something. Something to keep an eye on. And we will.

A Wall Street Journal article was fun, and Crypto Twitter talked about it

This article was published on Monday. But it made the rounds on Crypto Twitter, and beyond, all day yesterday.

The headline is fun: “Top Gun Traders: Stock Bets and Crypto Culture Take Over the Military.” And the lede is fun too:

“Space Force Capt. Gordon McCulloh was sitting in a military propeller plane high in the calm, dark sky over New Mexico on a recent Wednesday night when his squadron’s group chat blew up.”

Space Force captain. Of course we’ll keep reading:

“Servicemembers helped fuel a surge in crypto prices that started in the fall of 2020 and peaked in 2021. In 2020, eight of the top 25 U.S. zip codes with the highest share of tax returns reporting receiving or disposing of crypto were around military bases, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Internal Revenue Service data. The price of bitcoin roughly quadrupled that year. In 2021, the share rose to 11 out of 25.

Around Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, 16.3% of individual income tax returns in 2021 reported receiving, selling, exchanging or disposing of crypto, according to IRS data. The share was even higher around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona (19.4%) and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California (18.1%). Across the U.S., just 4.1% of returns ticked the same box.”

OK, so basically the point of the article is that folks in the US military, which is a heavily young and male population, trade on-chain assets, meme stocks, and more. It is a fun article. But it is also a bit of a John Madden moment. Young men in America trade crypto and meme stocks.

But it caught Crypto Twitter’s attention. And in our view, it was well written. So heck, why not, give it a read.

By the way:

“Military bases lost their dominant position in 2022, the most recent year for which IRS data is available. Crypto prices fell precipitously that year and far fewer people on bases and elsewhere reported receiving or disposing of crypto on their tax returns…

If there’s a big correction, “they’re in for some hurt,” said Brian O’Neill, a financial adviser and Air Force veteran.”

Historically, there have been many big corrections in on-chain asset markets.

That’s a wrap

The SEC chair set a timeline for an innovation exemption and an article about US military servicemembers buying crypto caught attention. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.

Think we missed something today? Send us a note: email@meridianupdate.com.