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SEC, CFTC define digital asset rules, carve out most crypto assets as non-securities
Bay Area Times
March 18, 2026
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Top stories today:
- SEC, CFTC carve out most crypto assets as non-securities
- GPT-5.4 mini, nano debut for agents at lower cost
- Microsoft said to weigh legal action against OpenAI, Amazon
- Fed seen holding rates as officials weigh Iran-driven oil shock
- NVIDIA said to win China approval for H200 sales to multiple firms
- Anthropic launches Cowork Dispatch to rival OpenClaw agents
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Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):
1. SEC, CFTC define digital asset rules, carve out most crypto assets as non-securities
The SEC issued a long-awaited “token taxonomy” outlining which digital assets it deems securities.
A non-security crypto asset may cease to be an investment contract once issuers fulfill or fail their promises, the SEC said.
A proposed safe harbor rule for crypto startups is expected soon, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said.
It would allow firms to raise capital without immediate enforcement risk.
The safe harbor could last up to 4 years, he added.
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3. GPT-5.4 mini, nano debut for agents at lower cost
GPT-5.4 mini outperforms GPT-5 mini and approaches GPT-5.4 on SWE-Bench Pro, OpenAI said:
GPT-5.4 mini has a 400K context window, while GPT-5.4 nano is API-only.
GPT-5.4 mini scored 72.1% on OSWorld-Verified, per OpenAI, vs. Claude Haiku 4.5’s 50.7%.
GPT-5.4 mini uses ~30% of GPT-5.4 quota in Codex, OpenAI said.
ChatGPT Free and Go users can access GPT-5.4 mini via “Thinking” mode.
Other ChatGPT tiers use the model as a fallback for GPT-5.4 Thinking.
GPT-5.4 mini costs $0.75/$4.5 per 1M input/output tokens vs. GPT-5.4’s $2.5/$15 (<272K tokens), Claude Haiku 4.5’s $1/$2, and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite’s $0.25/$1.5, while nano is $0.2/$1.25.
4. Microsoft said to weigh legal action against OpenAI, Amazon over $50B AWS Frontier deal
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