On 1 July the European Union switches off the grace period that has let crypto firms operate while they queued for a licence. From that date, any business providing crypto asset services to clients in the EU without authorisation under the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation, known as MiCA, is break

For founders and investors. If you are a founder weighing up whether to tokenise your equity, or an investor trying to work out what you would actually be buying, this is the place to start. From a legal perspective, it covers: how tokenised equity works, what changes, what does not, and where the rules are heading. Tokenisation is a concept often met with much hype and little knowledge. At its core it is simple. A cryptoasset token is just shorthand for data held on-chai

The everything exchange now puts a public price on private companies before they list. For founders, the catch sits in what these contracts do not carry.

For most of 2023 and 2024, the tokenisation conversation ran on projections and pilots. McKinsey's $16 trillion market by 2030. Bank proofs of concept that never reached production. Consultations with no output. The gap between the narrative and the working infrastructure was wide enough to justify genuine scepticism. What is different now is that the plumbing is being built in places where it cannot easily be unbuilt. DTCC is not a startup running an experiment. It is the or

When the company that safekeeps more than 22 trillion euros of the world's securities decides tokenisation is the future, the interesting part is not the press release. It is the architecture underneath it.

The first Ways and Means crypto tax hearing in years. For UK founders and funds watching the global contest for capital, the signal matters more than the detail.

On 1 July 2026, four weeks from today, the transitional period under the EU's Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation expires across the bloc. From that date, any firm providing cryptoasset services to EU clients without full MiCA authorisation will be in breach of EU law and must stop. For UK tokenisat

On 1 July 2026, the EU's transitional window for crypto-asset service providers closes. With one month remaining, the headlines have focused on platforms scrambling for licences and stablecoins being delisted. If you are a founder exploring equity tokenisation, or an investor who has backed a company doing so, you may have read those pieces and wondered whether any of it is actually about you. The answer depends on where you sit. If You Are a Founder The most useful thing

When standards bodies form in emerging financial markets, the names on the founding membership list matter enormously. They shape the requirements, the definitions and ultimately the infrastructure that gets built. The Tokenized Cash Management Advisory Group, known as TCMAG, is the closest thing th

The world's most important settlement infrastructure is going digital. On 4 May 2026, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation confirmed it will begin limited production trades of tokenised securities in July 2026, with a full commercial launch planned for October. The announcement confirms wha

For UK founders and investors watching the tokenisation of equity markets, one of the clearest signals yet that this space is being given a real regulatory foundation arrived from Washington on 18 May 2026. Bloomberg Law reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission, under Chair Paul Atkin

On 14 May 2026, the United States Senate Banking Committee passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 15-9 vote. Two Democrats joined Republicans to advance the bill, marking the first bipartisan approval of comprehensive US digital asset regulation at committee level. The vote moves the legis

Today the US Senate Banking Committee sits down to vote on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, a 309-page piece of legislation that would do something Washington has been promising for years: draw a clear line between which digital assets are securities and which are commodities, and assign regula

On 6 May 2026, Chainlink, Apex Group, Bluprynt and Hacken announced the successful completion of the Bermuda Monetary Authority's Embedded Supervision Solution. The pilot demonstrated, for the first time at live scale, that regulatory compliance rules can be built directly into digital asset transac

On 8 May 2026, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook delivered a speech at the Central Bank of West African States conference in Dakar, Senegal, that covered tokenisation in terms usually reserved for established financial market infrastructure. She confirmed that tokenised assets in the United States

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

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

For founders and institutional investors watching the tokenised securities space, 4 May marked a quiet but structurally important inflection point. Securitize, the world's leading tokenisation platform by assets under administration, received approvals from FINRA that expand the capabilities of its broker-dealer subsidiary, Securitize Markets LLC, in ways that have not existed in the US financial system before.

DigiShares in the Gulf DigiShares, the Danish-founded tokenisation infrastructure provider, has announced that CEO Claus Skaaning, will participate in an RWA tokenisation masterclass in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday 6 May 2026 where the programme will cover three core topics: legal readiness for RWA tokenisation in the Gulf, asset classification under emerging Saudi frameworks, and the near-term market direction for institutional digital assets in the region.

As of this week, the global tokenisation industry has convened in Dubai. Dubai RWA Week 2026 — running from April 27 to May 1 with the flagship RWA Summit on May 1 at Uptown Tower in DMCC — marks the most significant gathering of institutional RWA participants outside of New York and London this year. For UK founders and investors tracking where capital and regulatory momentum are building, the event sends a clear signal: the Gulf has become a first-tier jurisdiction for r