The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has officially recognised blockchain and digital assets as key technologies for modernising the U.S. financial system and included them as an independent task in its next five-year strategy. It is seen as moving away from an enforcement-focused cryptocurrency policy stance and toward building an institutional foundation to foster tokenised capital markets.

On June 15 local time, blockchain outlet CryptoSlate reported that the SEC specified digital assets and blockchain as a core policy area in a recently released draft strategy for fiscal 2026 to 2030, alongside investor protection, capital formation and agency modernisation.

In the document, the SEC said it would build a "reasonable, consistent and principles-based regulatory framework" for digital assets. Jamie Selway (제이미 셀웨이), director of the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets, also said at a recent event in New York that it is developing a regulatory framework for listing and trading tokenised securities. The SEC and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission are jointly coordinating areas where the agencies' rules conflict, including swap reporting systems, portfolio margin and commodity definitions.

The market is assessing the shift as more than simple policy wording. Jenny Levin (제니 레빈), chief legal and operating officer at the Algorand Foundation and a former federal prosecutor, said that even approaching it from a perspective of "market modernisation," rather than "crypto," from the standpoint of institutional investors could completely change how risks are assessed. She said compliance organisations would no longer be weighing whether to accept speculative assets, but would instead examine how to operate existing financial infrastructure more efficiently and safely.

The SEC said in the document that the issuance of tokenised securities and on-chain financial infrastructure are legitimate means of capital formation. It also set out the view that custody, trading and staking services should be able to operate under appropriate supervision without duplicative or conflicting regulation.

This year, the SEC has continued moves to ease related regulation. A review is under way of an innovation exemption for tokenised stocks, and in April it also issued staff guidance granting operators of self-custody trading interfaces a five-year grace period to obtain broker licences. Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange have received approval to trade tokenised versions of some stocks alongside the existing shares.

The SEC also drew a line against the view that blockchain efficiency depends on regulatory avoidance. Levin stressed that blockchain's competitiveness lies not in regulatory arbitrage but in reducing inefficiencies in existing financial markets. She cited complex settlement systems, post-trade reconciliation processes and intermediary-centred structures as causes of inefficiency in traditional markets. By contrast, she argued that public blockchain-based markets could offer lower costs and faster processing speeds while complying with the same regulations.

She also cited as an advantage that, in a blockchain environment, regulatory compliance can be applied automatically at the trade execution stage rather than through manual post-trade verification. Transfer restrictions, allow lists, and freezing and clawback authorities can be implemented at the protocol level, she said.

The SEC said it will continue regulatory coordination with the CFTC to expand the tokenisation market. The market has cited inter-agency regulatory uncertainty as one of the biggest obstacles when institutional investors review crypto-related businesses. The industry believes inflows of institutional funds could accelerate if the SEC and CFTC consistently align asset classification standards and supervisory systems.

Legislative tasks still remain. The CLARITY bill, a U.S. crypto market structure bill, passed the House last year and also cleared the Senate Banking Committee. It now awaits a vote in the full Senate and needs at least 60 votes to pass. Galaxy Digital recently lowered its estimate of the probability of passage to 60 percent from 75 percent, reflecting the possibility of further delays. Prediction market Polymarket is also pricing the probability of passage in the mid-50 percent range.

Future points to watch are clear. They include whether tokenised securities rules are formally proposed, progress in coordination between the SEC and CFTC, a full Senate vote on the CLARITY bill, launches of institutional tokenised products based on public networks, and additional guidance related to custody and settlement. If these measures materialise, the benefits are more likely to be concentrated among capital-market infrastructure operators that comply with regulation than among speculative tokens.