Matt Hougan (맷 호건), chief investment officer at Bitwise, said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent proposal on cryptocurrency regulation does not fully open the door to Wall Street, but opens only a few doors among many.

On Aug. 21, blockchain media outlet CryptoSlate reported that Hougan said the United States' shift to a pro-crypto stance is meaningful progress. But he said institutional money will accept crypto infrastructure like mainstream financial infrastructure only if a series of small and complex rule changes accumulates.

The SEC on Aug. 18 released "regulated cryptoassets", a separate regulatory framework tailored to certain crypto investment contracts. The proposal includes exemptions of up to $75 million for 12 months. U.S. President Donald Trump on Aug. 19 mentioned the "Clarity bill" at a White House cryptocurrency event, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Commissioner Mike Selick said he is working to bring Hyperliquid into a fully compliant framework in the United States.

Hougan said the past week was a good week for the crypto industry, but said that alone is not enough. Small changes do not draw market attention, he said, but such steps matter more for actual integration into the mainstream system.

He cited bitcoin spot exchange-traded products as a leading example. The SEC approved listings of bitcoin spot ETPs in January 2024, but large wealth-management platforms still separately carried out product-by-product approvals, permission for inclusion by account type, internal sign-offs and procedures to reflect them in model portfolios. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have expanded the scope of crypto access for wealth-management advisers only in the past year, and BlackRock added a bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund to portfolios only after more than a year after launch.

A regulatory variable Hougan is watching is Rule 611. The rule is part of Regulation NMS enacted in 2005 and is a trade-through rule intended to prevent order routing that bypasses better prices, based on an interconnected exchange system like traditional stock markets. The SEC proposed eliminating the rule in June, and the comment period ended on Aug. 17. Hougan said the rule is a practical obstacle to DeFi trading infrastructure such as Uniswap combining with brokerage services to serve investors in tokenised stocks.

The legal industry also points to limits in applying trade-through rules as they are to trading environments with structures different from traditional stock markets. Hougan said, "If Uniswap can compete in tokenised stock and bond markets, it will deliver very good results." He said Hyperliquid also has similar potential in derivatives markets that meet regulatory requirements. But he added that additional regulatory work is needed to make that happen.

Even if the Rule 611 issue is resolved, the challenge of market fragmentation remains. Liquidity is being dispersed as multiple issuers tokenise the same stock on different blockchains under different structures and rules.

The issue is also tied to the pace of market growth. As of Aug. 17, the tokenised stock market was estimated at about $2.8 billion, and tokenised stocks accounted for about 15 percent of the broader real-world asset tokenisation market. That was about triple the share compared with the start of the year. A separate estimate showed monthly transfer volume of about $23 billion, with more than 1.3 million holders.

Hougan was optimistic about tokenised stocks themselves, but said standardisation, clearer rules and interoperability must come first for growth to translate into actual liquidity. He pointed in particular to U.S. financial-market infrastructure operating like a parallel system separated by stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives.

Hougan projected that tokenisation and Hyperliquid-style infrastructure could in the long term tie such separated trading systems into a single financial super app. The key concept is cross-margining. Sharing collateral across stocks, bonds, derivatives and cryptocurrencies can improve capital efficiency, he said. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins also expressed support for a super app concept that handles custody and trading across multiple asset classes under a single licence, and portfolio margin and cross-margining are included in the task of aligning SEC and CFTC systems.

Stablecoins were also presented as part of the same trend. The "Genius Act" was enacted in July 2025, but key provisions still require federal regulators to draft detailed implementation rules. Even so, Stripe has completed its acquisition of Bridge, Mastercard has completed its acquisition of BVNK, and Circle staked 500,000 HYPE tokens to become a Hyperliquid validator. Hougan said companies move into building, acquiring and integrating if they judge that the regulatory direction has solidified even before the system is fully finalised.

He said recent discussions on revising accounting standards fit the same context. The U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board is reviewing ways to clarify whether some stablecoins can be treated as cash equivalents. Hougan said such changes are the kind of updates that have a bigger impact on balance sheets than on headlines. He said whether Wall Street accepts cryptocurrencies ultimately depends less on a single major law and more on whether detailed rules that move market infrastructure are also put in place.