The SEC Just Classified 16 Cryptocurrencies as Digital Commodities. 3 of Them Could Double From Here.

For a decade, the crypto industry faced a difficult and often ambiguous regulatory environment. People simply couldn't tell with certainty whether the assets they were working with would be legally treated as securities, commodities, or something else entirely. That fog is now clearing.

On March 17, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued an interpretive guidance classifying 16 cryptocurrencies as "digital commodities" and establishing a taxonomy for most of the other assets in the sector. The list of assets includes Ethereum, (CRYPTO: ETH) Solana, (CRYPTO: SOL) XRP, (CRYPTO: XRP) Cardano, Chainlink, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin, among others. Three of those coins stand to gain the most here, so let's examine why this new framework could be the catalyst that sends each of them significantly higher.

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These coins just got less risky

One of the most important parts of the new guidance is that it clarifies the way that regulators view staking.

If you aren't familiar, staking is the process by which holders lock their coins to help validate transactions on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain in exchange for yield. It's a big element of what draws capital to chains like Ethereum and Solana.

Until now, whether staking rewards constituted a securities offering was an open legal question that chilled institutional participation substantially. Securities offerings require a lot of paperwork, and the SEC tends to get litigious when that paperwork isn't filed. Plus, once securities are launched and in the wild, they're governed by an extensive set of regulations.

The SEC now makes clear that most forms of staking do not involve the offer or sale of a security, as the tokens being staked are not themselves securities but rather digital commodities. These distinctions matter enormously for Ethereum and Solana, because the staking ecosystems on both chains now have a much cleaner bill of regulatory health.

For example, Ethereum has roughly 37 million Ether coins staked, which is about 29% of its total supply, and equivalent to more than $80 billion in value. Solana's staking ecosystem is even more mature; roughly 68% of Solana's supply is staked, producing annual yields of about 6% to 7%.

Now, institutional capital can flow freely into the various staking services those networks offer such that the capital generates a yield. For that to happen, the capital has to be converted into Ether or Solana first, which means buying it, and that's likely to send prices soaring. It isn't unreasonable at all to expect these two coins to grow a lot over the next few years, given that their staking yields are quite competitive with traditional sources of yield like Treasury bonds.

XRP's era of uncertainty is over

XRP is also very likely to benefit from the SEC's new classification scheme, but the mechanism is different.

While Ethereum and Solana needed staking clarity to soar, XRP needed something more fundamental: official permission to exist without being at risk of litigation. Ripple, the company that issues XRP, spent years battling SEC enforcement actions alleging the coin was an unregistered security. That fight depressed the coin's price and spooked the institutional clients that Ripple was courting to use its blockchain. Although courts ruled that XRP wasn't an unregistered security under most conditions, it now has regulatory clarity because it's officially a digital commodity.

Thus, banks evaluating the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for getting access to Ripple's suite of crypto-financial services no longer face the risk of dealing with a business entangled in securities violations. And so all of that financial infrastructure Ripple built becomes much more valuable now that the legal cloud has dissipated.

Can these three actually double?

Now, let's turn to the question of whether these three assets are more likely to double as a result of the new guidance.

At recent prices of $2,100 for Ethereum, $90 for Solana, and $1.50 for XRP, doubling means rising to about $4,200, $180, and $3, respectively. None of those targets are outlandish at all relative to prior highs. In 2025, Ethereum peaked at $4,946, Solana reached nearly $293, and XRP topped $3.65.

So picking up this big new catalyst could very well lead these assets to double within the next three years, especially considering that they all had strong investment theses before this latest ruling.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.