On July 22, 2026, Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a statement cautioning cryptocurrency market participants against the notion that crypto assets and activities fall outside the scope of the federal securities laws, focusing on the use of: vaults and onchain lending strategies.
Commissioner Peirce’s statement builds on her July 2025…
This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2026 rulemaking agenda (the “Unified Agenda”) was made publicly available (see here). The Unified Agenda sets out the SEC’s rulemaking priorities for the next year, with general timeframes (but these timeframes are guidelines, and should not be considered definite indicators of when rulemakings will happen). The current…
This Legal Update summarises the joint Call for Input published by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) and the Bank of England (“BoE”) (together, the “regulators”) in May 2026. The paper invites industry responses by 3 July 2026.
The goal of the Call for Input is to seek industry…
The Staff of the Division of Trading and Markets (the “Staff”) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or the “Commission”) recently issued a statement (the “Statement”) providing its views on the application of the broker-dealer registration requirements under Section 15(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), to…
On April 17, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved with immediate effectiveness the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) proposed rule change (SR-NYSE-2026-17) that allows tokenized securities to be listed and traded on the NYSE. The NYSE rule would integrate blockchain-based representations of traditional stocks and ETFs into its existing trading infrastructure. Like Nasdaq’s…
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued an order approving proposed amendments (the “Proposed Amendments”) by The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq” or “Exchange”) to the Exchange’s rules to enable trading of certain securities in tokenized form during the pendency of a tokenization pilot program (the “DTC Pilot”) operated by The Depository Trust Company (“DTC”).…
On March 17, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an interpretation that provides guidance regarding how the federal securities laws apply to certain crypto assets and to certain transactions involving crypto assets. Consistent with the recent MoU between the agencies, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission joined in this interpretation and guidance confirming that…
On March 5, 2026, the Market Structure Subcommittee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) Investor Advisory Committee (“IAC”) released a recommendation regarding the tokenization of equity securities. The recommendation will be discussed and voted on at the IAC’s March 12, 2026 meeting. As discussed below, the IAC cautions against adoption of a…
Last week, the banking agencies issued guidance in the form of Frequently Asked Questions that provides certainty regarding the treatment of tokenized securities for purposes of the capital rules. While this is not surprising, it is helpful to market participants perhaps especially in the context of the repo and derivatives market as more market participants…
