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The 2022 guidance, which the industry says threatens crypto investors’ ability to find safe harbors for their assets, should have been treated as a formal rule, the GAO concluded in a report issued on Tuesday. The congressional watchdog is contending that, according to federal rulemaking procedures, the accounting bulletin should have gone through a different process, including submission to Congress before it went into effect. Still, that finding doesn’t have any direct effect on the bulletin’s ongoing status as technically nonbinding SEC policy, the agency indicated on Tuesday.