SEC Proposes Rule Letting Advisers Hold Bitcoin Directly Without Qualified Custodian

The proposal quietly targets a structural bottleneck rather than a market-access question: advisers have been caught between custody rules and custodians' unwillingness to touch digital assets, and the SEC is now signalling that the impasse, not the asset class, is the problem. It matters most for advisers already allocating or considering bitcoin exposure, since self-custody would shift operational and key-management risk onto them. Whether the comment period surfaces objections from custody banks, and whether the final rule keeps the 'no willing custodian' trigger narrow, is the open question.