Tuesday’s Federal Register, Volume 91, Number 192, ran 630 pages, and three documents account for 424 of them. Two are Securities and Exchange Commission proposals, one on crypto custody and one on who may charge performance fees, and the third is a 120-page final rule on health insurance price transparency. The more revealing material sits in the margins, where FinCEN retired two proposals that would have watched crypto move and the Treasury Department shielded a new fraud tip line from the Privacy Act.
Self-Custody, Now With Paperwork
Start with the SEC’s proposal on adviser and fund custody rules and crypto custody rules, which runs 234 pages and takes comments until December 7. The core idea is that a registered investment adviser could hold a client’s crypto itself when no permitted custodian is available, provided the adviser documents that finding in writing at the outset and again every quarter. The release adds conditions. The adviser must mitigate cybersecurity risks and review its controls at least annually, and it must obtain internal control reports within six months and yearly after that. A fund’s board would have to decide, before the adviser takes possession and annually afterward, that the asset would receive reasonable care in the adviser’s hands.
It is a tidy structure, and the release is candid about why custody rules exist. It recounts that when the adviser and the custodian are the same party, the adviser can move the assets directly, and that a separate custodian’s account statement is what discourages unauthorized trading. The proposal then builds a path for the adviser to be both. The justification is practical and not frivolous. The SEC says custodians cannot support every token, that new assets may have no custodian at all, and that state trust companies have been unsure whether they count as banks, a problem staff addressed with a September 2025 no-action letter. The release also leans on the Crypto Task Force the commission created in January 2025 and on Executive Order 14178. A safeguard that rests on the fox’s quarterly memo about the henhouse is still a safeguard, technically. The comment file will show whether it is a good one.
Its companion, Investment Adviser Performance-Based Compensation Modernization, would widen who may pay advisers a share of capital gains. It would expand the arrangement for registered funds and business development companies under conditions, and it would extend the exemption to investors who meet the Regulation D accredited investor definition. Comments are also due December 7. The SEC expects the change to let a wider range of advisers offer regulated funds and to put more strategies inside them. Whether shareholders were asking for more performance fees is a question the comment file will answer.
The Mixers Are Forgiven
Pages 63513 to 63515 hold the day’s best contrast. FinCEN withdrew its 2023 proposal to treat international crypto mixing as a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern, and it separately withdrew a 2020 proposal on transactions involving unhosted wallets. The mixing rule would have required covered financial institutions to report mixing transactions, with customer identity details attached. The wallet proposal would have required reports and identity verification above $10,000, and recordkeeping above $3,000, when a counterparty used an unhosted or otherwise covered wallet.
The stated reasons come in two registers. On mixers, FinCEN cites commenters’ concern that the definition was broad enough to chill legitimate activity and burden institutions, and it points to a July 2025 report from the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, which said the administration supports lawful users transacting privately on public blockchains. In the same notice the agency concedes that illicit actors still use mixers to hinder investigations and says it will keep monitoring. On wallets, the explanation is that withdrawal is part of making digital asset rules fit for purpose, and FinCEN will take no further action. Deputy Director Jimmy L. Kirby signed both.
Set that beside the SEC’s custody proposal and the day has a theme. The government is making room for crypto to be held, and moved, with fewer questions put to the people doing the moving. Each agency has reasons, and some of them are good. But the same Tuesday that loosens one reporting net shows the Treasury Department weaving another, which brings us to the third item.
A Tip Line With a Privacy Shield
Treasury’s final rule on Privacy Act exemptions concerns a new system of records, Treasury .032, for Federal Program Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Tip Intake and Referral Records. The system will take in tips from the public, agencies, contractors and grant recipients about suspected fraud, improper payments and misuse of federal funds, then triage them and refer them to other agencies and inspectors general. Treasury exempts the system from certain Privacy Act provisions under the law enforcement investigatory material provision, effective November 5, and cites Executive Orders 14249 and 14395 as the policy backing.
Treasury received two comments on its June proposal. One called the exemptions overly broad and raised transparency and oversight concerns. The other supported protecting genuine investigatory material but urged Treasury to narrow the exemption and preserve protections for records that are not law enforcement related. Treasury kept the exemptions, and says they do not reach every record merely because it sits in the system. That is a fair limit on paper. In practice a tip line is where a neighbor’s grudge and a real fraud look identical at intake, which is exactly the stage at which access and correction rights matter most.
Three other privacy filings ran the same morning, and they are mostly housekeeping. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission republished 13 systems of records notices after a comprehensive review, with four (NRC 27, 36, 39 and 40) substantively revised and comments due November 5. The National Archives is revising NARA 44, its reasonable accommodation records, to cover pregnancy and childbirth requests under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and to move some processing into a web based application. The FDIC rescinded two applicant recruiting systems because an Office of Personnel Management government-wide notice already covers them.
The Rest of the Docket
The 120-page Transparency in Coverage final rule, a joint product of the IRS, the Labor Department’s benefits arm and CMS, takes effect December 7. Citing Executive Order 14221, it adds contextual files and data elements such as product type and network name to the machine-readable pricing files, changes the level at which data is aggregated, lengthens the reporting period and lowers the claims threshold for out-of-network historical data, trims reporting frequency, and requires pricing information to be available by phone.
The FDA opened a request for information on ibogaine trial design, covering dose escalation, care setting, safety monitoring and stopping rules, and noted that HHS is funding development and that the first federally supported trials are expected to enroll adults with opioid use disorder and adults with PTSD. Comments are due November 20. The agency also issued device rules classifying a hyperoxia monitor used with pulse oximetry, a focused ultrasound system for non-thermal tissue ablation and a high throughput DNA sequencing test for hereditary cancer predisposition, plus an exemption for certain clinical toxicology test systems.
The remainder includes NHTSA and NTIA eliminating obsolete 911 grant program regulations, a NHTSA request for information on prehospital blood transfusion, HUD‘s 2027 designation of Difficult Development Areas and Qualified Census Tracts, the SEC’s acknowledgment of ICE Futures U.S. filing Form 1-N under Section 6(g) to register as a national securities exchange, a NOAA final rule under Amendment 62 raising Gulf of America red grouper catch limits, effective October 2, an EPA Notice of Availability seeking comment on initial air quality designations under the 2024 revised annual PM2.5 standard, which tightened the annual limit to 9.0 micrograms per cubic meter and carries a 30-day public comment period, and 15 pages of OFAC sanctions actions. The issue carried no presidential documents and no executive orders.
