The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Thursday (September 17) ET the launch of "innovation waivers," granting temporary, conditional exemptions to eligible tokenized securities trading platforms. This allows them to trade tokenized versions of certain U.S.-listed stocks on-chain for a period of five years. On the same day, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also introduced a new "no-action" stance for passive software providers, further expanding the scope of regulatory exemptions. Boosted by these positive regulatory signals and renewed inflows into Bitcoin ETFs, the crypto market saw a collective rally on Friday (September 18). Bitcoin surpassed the $80,000 mark intraday, briefly rising above $81,300, up over 6.7% from its daily low. Ethereum also briefly broke above $2,640, up over 8.5% from its daily low. U.S. crypto-related stocks also strengthened across the board, with Coinbase closing up nearly 11.7% and Strategy rising approximately 16.4%.