The US administration has attached a specific deadline to its push for digital asset market structure legislation. Patrick Witt, executive director of the President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, stated on 6 May 2026 that the White House is targeting July 4 for Senate passage of the Digit

The annual Consensus conference, held in Miami Beach this week, has long been the place where digital asset ambitions are announced. In 2026, something has shifted. The institutions arriving in Miami are not announcing plans. They are reporting results.

What ESMA Said ESMA's April 2026 statement sets out the authority's expectations in direct terms. Any entity providing crypto-asset services to EU clients after 1 July 2026 without a MiCA authorisation will be in breach of EU law and must stop providing those services. The statement covers the full scope of regulated activity under MiCA: issuance of crypto-assets including asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens, and the provision of crypto-asset services including custod

On 29 April 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority published Policy Statement PS26/7, confirming its final rules and guidance for fund tokenisation in the UK. The document follows the regulator's consultation paper CP25/28, published in October 2025, and marks a significant step forward in the UK's digital securities strategy. The policy statement does two things of immediate practical consequence. First, it sets out how authorised fund managers can use distributed ledger t

The informal deadline for the US Senate Banking Committee to schedule a markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the CLARITY Act — came and went on Friday 25 April without any action from Committee Chairman Tim Scott. The bill, which passed the House 294 to 134 last July, now faces an extended wait before it can move toward a Senate floor vote.

Time is almost up for European crypto-asset businesses operating under MiCA's transitional grace period. On 17 April 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a formal statement — document reference ESMA75-113276571-1679 — making clear that the transitional periods under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation will definitively end on 1 July 2026. There will be no further extensions.

For UK founders sitting on illiquid equity, the landscape for secondary share trading just quietly got bigger. On 22 April 2026, Asset Match Limited became the third operator to receive FCA approval to run a trading venue under the PISCES framework - the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System - Britain's regulated sandbox for trading shares in private companies. This follows approvals for the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market (PSM) and

Ctrl Alt Ltd, a subsidiary of Alt Ltd, has been placed on the FCA's official register as a directly authorised investment firm. The UAE-regulated firm now holds its own FCA permissions, allowing it to operate independently rather than as an Appointed Representative under another firm's licence. The authorisation enables Ctrl Alt to expand its digital capital markets services and support the end-to-end lifecycle of tokenised assets — from issuance and primary distribution thro

For years, the stablecoin market has been a dollar story. Of the $305 billion in stablecoins in circulation as of January 2026, over 99% are denominated in US dollars. That asymmetry is not just a currency statistic — it is a structural risk for European financial markets, a competitive disadvantage for EU-based institutions, and a potential sovereignty problem for European regulators. A consortium of twelve of Europe's largest banks just decided to do something about it

On 21 April 2026, Atkins told an industry audience that the SEC was "on the cusp" of releasing a framework that would allow tokenised securities to trade directly on blockchain networks for the first time under formal regulatory cover. For an industry that has operated in legal grey areas for years, that statement represents a significant shift in the regulatory weather.

HM Treasury unveiled a comprehensive payment services regulatory integration plan on 21 April 2026 — during UK Fintech Week — designed to bring stablecoins, tokenised bank deposits, and conventional electronic payments under one coherent legal roof. The package proposes new legislation to reduce administrative burdens for firms seeking to provide stablecoin payment services, whilst expanding the FCA's regulatory powers over Open Banking developments.

The tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA) is often associated with the dry mechanics of private credit, real estate, and treasuries. But on 21 April 2026, Novarra — a global institutional tokenisation platform — announced an expansion that brings the technology into a much more narrative-driven arena: professional sports. The company is launching a dedicated infrastructure to enable the tokenisation of future revenue streams for athletes, sports organisations, and collegiat

This month, something changed. Republic Europe — formerly known as Seedrs, one of the UK's most established equity crowdfunding platforms, has partnered with the London Stock Exchange to offer access to PISCES: the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System. It is a clunky acronym for something genuinely significant.

The FCA regulates financial markets and firms to ensure integrity, protect consumers, and promote competition. Equity tokens, representing ownership in a company, often fall within the FCA’s remit as they can be classified as securities. This classification triggers specific regulatory requirements. The FCA’s approach to equity tokenisation is grounded in existing securities law, adapted to the digital context. Tokenised shares must comply with the same rules as traditiona

Digital Plumbing evolving The debate about whether tokenisation works has largely been settled. The harder question, the one that will define the next two years, is whether the financial system's underlying infrastructure can support a transition from carefully managed pilots to genuine production scale. From Proof of Concept to Production Problem 2025 was, by most measures, the year institutional tokenisation stopped being theoretical. The EU's MiCA framework became operat

On 15 December 2025, HM Treasury laid the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2025 before Parliament, formally bringing a wide range of cryptoasset activities inside the FSMA regulatory perimeter. The instrument was subsequently published as SI 2026/102 in February 2026. The following day, the FCA published three consultation papers setting out its proposed rules across conduct and organisational requirements (CP25/40), admissions, disclosures a

Understanding Token Ownership in Digital Equity: Insights from the UKJT Report. Tokenised equity is reshaping how companies raise capital and how investors hold shares. Yet, a pressing question remains: if something goes wrong, who actually owns the token? This article explores the key insights from that report and what founders and investors need to understand about token ownership under English law.

The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce has published its Report on Control of Digital Assets, and while it may not attract mainstream attention, it represents a meaningful step forward in how digital assets are understood within English law.

the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued joint guidance that the digital assets industry has been waiting over a decade for. For the first time, the SEC formally defined different types of crypto assets and how the regulator will approach them — ending years of enforcement-by-litigation and replacing it with a clear taxonomy.

Creating the token is the easy part. Getting it into investors’ hands is where the regulation lives. If you are a founder exploring tokenisation, one of the first questions you will ask is whether you are allowed to do it. The short answer is yes. But the fuller answer depends on what exactly you mean by “do it.” Tokenising your own equity, creating a digital token that represents shares in your company, is not, in itself, a heavily regulated act. It is broadly comparable to