Regulators race to tokenize everything regulators once said couldn't be tokenized 🪙

The chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission told market participants Tuesday that financial markets should brace for "mass tokenization," arguing that putting real-world assets on blockchain rails could deliver near-instant settlement and real-time collateral movement between clearinghouses, intermediaries and end users. Speaking at the US Treasury Market Conference, CFTC Chair Michael Selig compared the shift to the move from hand signals to electronic trading, adding that the agency intends to pursue principles-based rules as onchain finance evolves. Selig said in August that the CFTC would advance crypto rules under its existing authority if Congress did not pass the CLARITY Act; the Senate did not advance the bill on Sept. 15.

On Sept. 17, the CFTC submitted a regulatory action covering crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review, though the filing remains at the "prerule" stage and does not yet spell out proposed regulations. Separately, the CFTC issued a warning earlier this month over risky prediction market "mention" contracts.

At the Securities and Exchange Commission, Division of Trading and Markets Director Jamie Selway said in a Bloomberg TV interview that tokenization and crypto have recently become politicized but are "not naturally a politicized function," arguing that US leadership in building the markets should attract bipartisan support. Also on Sept. 17, the SEC granted a temporary "Innovation Exemption" letting certain platforms trade digital versions of US-listed stocks under defined conditions, an approach SEC Chair Paul Atkins flagged in February as a path to facilitate onchain trading while longer-term rules are developed. Major crypto assets such as $BTC and $ETH continued trading alongside the policy news.