SEC Staff Calls Canton Coin a Digital Commodity, CC Up 4%

Staff at the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance answered a request from the developer of the Canton network and said they view its token, Canton Coin (CC), as a "digital commodity". CC rose about 4% afterwards, to $0.098.

It sounds like legal fine print. But this is the token behind the DTCC tokenization service for stocks and Treasuries that went live a week ago, so the letter carries weight. Here is what it says and what it leaves out.

What exactly did the SEC say?

This is a so-called no-action letter: a company describes its project and asks the regulator whether it risks enforcement if it operates in a specific way. Canton's developer, Digital Asset, sent the request on October 30. The reply came on November 3.

Staff accepted Canton's explanation that the token's value comes from how the network runs and from demand for it, not from the efforts of a team promising profits to holders. That is exactly what separates a "digital commodity" from a security.

How does CC enter circulation?

Canton Network is a privacy-focused chain. Banks and financial firms use it to tokenize assets, trade and settle across different platforms. CC is not sold at launch here. It is earned.

• No ICO, no premine: tokens were not handed to founders in advance (a premine), and there was no public sale at the start.
• Participants receive CC for running infrastructure, validators for example.
• Application providers also earn tokens for activity on the network.
• How many tokens can be minted is set by the protocol, not by a person or a company.

The argument that no "central party" exists rests on this mechanism. If a protocol creates the token by fixed rules instead of an issuer deciding on its own, registration requirements look different.

Why is this not a final verdict?

The letter reflects the position of staff, not a legal ruling, and relies only on facts that Canton itself supplied. If those facts change, the conclusion can change too. For comparison, in March the SEC published guidance saying assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities in themselves, although the way they are sold can still fall under securities laws.

Canton says this is the first relief of its kind since the SEC's March interpretation and since the August Regulation Crypto Assets proposal. Similar letters went earlier to DoubleZero (2Z) in September 2025 and to Fuse in November 2025.

Why do banks need a token with a clear status?

Context matters here. A week ago DTCC (the US clearing house for securities) launched a tokenization service. It runs on Canton and on DTCC's own private network, and clients can turn stocks and Treasuries held at DTC into tokens. According to Decrypt, 20 Wall Street firms signed up. Morgan Stanley said it is among the first banks to tokenize US securities through it.

A bank does not want to build processes on a network whose token could land in a lawsuit at any moment. Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz put it this way.

"Financial institutions need confidence in both the technology they use and the economic model that supports it."

- Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, from the company's comment after the SEC reply, November 4, 2026

What comes next?

The Clarity Act stalled in the Senate in September, so crypto rules are increasingly shaped by the SEC and the CFTC. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said back in July that the agency was ready to act if Congress did not. The agency also recently proposed rules on how advisers and funds hold crypto.

For CC this is closer to a permission to keep going than a guarantee. The price is still down on the week, while Digital Asset, which raised $355 million this year from Wall Street firms and a sovereign wealth fund, now holds a document it can show to banks.