Japanese government bond yields have climbed to levels not seen in decades after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates last week, adding another source of pressure for cryptocurrencies already dealing with rising US Treasury yields and renewed Federal Reserve rate hike expectations.

Reuters reported on Sept. 24 that Japan’s 10 year government bond yield rose 10 basis points to 3.075%, its highest level since August 1996, while the five year yield gained 10 basis points to a record 2.375%.

The move came during Japan’s first trading session since the BOJ raised its policy rate from 1% to 1.25% on Friday. Japanese markets had remained closed through Wednesday because of public holidays.

Selling spread across the yield curve, with the 20 year JGB yield climbing 8 basis points to 3.9% and the 30 year yield rising 6 basis points to 4.13%.

BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda signaled that more rate hikes could follow, while concerns over domestic inflation have kept pressure on bonds. The yen weakened after the decision, prompting Japanese authorities to conduct rate checks in the currency market several hours later.

“Interest rates are being reviewed globally, and Japan’s interest rates are particularly low,” Masayuki Koguchi, executive chief fund manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management, told Reuters.

“So when the market finds a negative market cue, the selloff accelerates,” he added.

Japan bond yields could put yen funded trades under pressure

Rising Japanese rates do not provide a direct signal for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but traders have been watching Japan because of its role in funding global carry trades.

Investors have historically been able to borrow yen at low rates and move that money into assets offering higher returns. As Japanese borrowing costs rise, some of those positions can become less attractive.

Crypto.news previously reported that analysts were watching a possible squeeze on yen funded trades if the central bank continued raising rates.

Bitget Wallet chief marketing officer Jamie Elkaleh said at the time that the Fed remained the dominant central bank signal for Bitcoin because it sets the dollar liquidity and real yield backdrop, while the BOJ represented a risk that markets could be underestimating.

So far, however, Japan’s latest move has not produced clear signs of a disorderly carry trade unwind.

The yen weakened after the BOJ decision instead of strengthening. A classic carry trade reversal becomes more problematic when the Japanese currency rises because investors who borrowed yen can face higher costs when closing or servicing those positions.

The situation therefore differs from the yen carry trade episode of August 2024, when leveraged positions across global markets were reduced as Japanese monetary policy and currency moves forced investors to reassess cheap yen funding.

Higher domestic yields could still affect where Japanese institutions put their money.

Earlier in September, Japan’s 10 year bond yield briefly crossed 3%, prompting BlackRock to examine whether Japanese institutions could begin keeping more capital at home.

Yen hedged 10 year US Treasuries were yielding roughly 2% for Japanese investors at the time, compared with around 3% on Japanese government debt.

BlackRock used a hypothetical 5% reallocation of Japan’s roughly $1.1 trillion in US Treasury holdings to show that around $55 billion could move toward Japanese assets. The calculation was presented as a scenario, not a forecast of actual selling.

Fitch Ratings similarly said higher domestic yields could encourage Japanese institutions to retain more capital at home, though it did not predict a large liquidation of existing overseas bond holdings.

US rates remain the more immediate pressure on cryptocurrencies

Japan’s bond selloff comes as Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market are already dealing with another rise in US borrowing costs.

US Treasury yields jumped Wednesday after stronger than expected business activity revived inflation concerns.

S&P Global’s flash US Composite PMI Output Index rose to 58.4 in September from 56, reaching its highest level since July 2021.

Fed funds futures subsequently priced a 66% probability of another rate hike in October, up from 53% earlier Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Pressure on Treasuries grew after a $70 billion auction of five year notes received weak demand. The benchmark 10 year Treasury yield rose nearly 14 basis points to 5.106%, its highest level since 2007 and its biggest one day move since April 2025.

Two year yields climbed more than 11 basis points to 4.891% after briefly touching 4.947%.

Bitcoin has already been feeling the pressure from bond yields during September as investors reassessed inflation, oil prices and the possibility of further Fed tightening.

The dollar reached its highest level in nearly two months on Wednesday as expectations for another Fed rate hike grew, according to Reuters.

Bitcoin has remained under pressure even when crypto specific demand provided some support. On Sept. 1, BTC traded around $77,500 as rate concerns weighed on the market despite positive spot Bitcoin ETF flows.

What could Japan’s bond selloff mean for Bitcoin?

The immediate risk from Japan depends largely on whether rising rates begin to affect yen funded positions or encourage more Japanese capital to remain in domestic markets.

Neither outcome has developed into a major crypto market event so far.

The yen’s weakness following the BOJ decision reduces the immediate case for a repeat of the rapid carry trade unwind seen in 2024. There is no clear evidence that Japanese investors are selling overseas assets on a scale that is directly affecting cryptocurrencies.

Institutional allocations depend on currency hedging costs, liquidity requirements, duration targets and regulatory requirements, making the effect of higher JGB yields difficult to isolate.

The US remains the more visible source of pressure for crypto markets, with Treasury yields above 5%, the dollar near a two month high and traders raising expectations for another Fed hike.

Japan adds a separate risk for traders to watch because borrowing costs are moving higher from historically low levels while domestic bond yields become more competitive with overseas assets.

Katsutoshi Inadome, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, told Reuters that local reports involving Economic Minister Minoru Kiuchi and reflationist economists had raised concerns that the BOJ could remain behind the curve in dealing with higher prices.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s first economic blueprint, released in July with an emphasis on economic growth, had previously unsettled Japanese bond markets and pushed yields higher. Selling in super long bonds eased earlier this month as traders began pricing a faster pace of BOJ rate hikes.

Britain’s largest banks have completed what UK Finance described as the world’s first interbank transactions using tokenized deposits, testing blockchain based commercial bank money across mortgage and person to person payments.

According to UK Finance, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest and Barclays carried out two remortgage transactions using tokenized deposits, while a separate group of three banks that included HSBC tested a person to person payment linked to a simulated online marketplace purchase.

The transactions form part of UK Finance’s Great British Tokenised Deposit initiative, which was launched to test whether digital representations of sterling bank deposits can move between different financial institutions. Previous bank projects had largely operated within individual systems, limiting their use for transactions involving customers at separate banks.

UK banks test tokenized deposits across separate institutions

Tokenized deposits represent conventional commercial bank deposits on a blockchain or another distributed ledger. The money remains a liability of the bank that issued it and retains the legal status and regulatory protections attached to an ordinary deposit.

Banks have spent years experimenting with blockchain systems for deposits, bonds, stocks and other financial assets, but separate infrastructure developed by individual institutions created problems when assets needed to move between them.

UK Finance designed the current pilot around interoperability between banks, with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nationwide and Santander participating. Quant, EY and Linklaters have supported the initiative.

The latest transactions put that model into practice through two different use cases.

For the online marketplace test, programmable deposits allowed money to remain reserved in a buyer’s bank account until the agreed conditions of the transaction were met. Funds were released to the seller only after confirmation that the goods had been received.

No physical goods changed hands because the transaction was simulated.

Jana Mackintosh, UK Finance’s managing director for Payments and Innovation, said the setup showed how programmable deposits could lower fraud risks in online transactions.

A similar mechanism was used for the two remortgage transactions. Funds were locked during the property process and released automatically when the transaction was completed.

The mortgage use case had been built into the project from its earlier stages, alongside person to person marketplace payments and settlement of digital assets. UK Finance previously said tokenized deposits could improve payment speed and fraud protection while retaining the protections associated with conventional bank deposits.

Tokenized deposits keep money inside the banking system

The tests come as UK regulators work through how different forms of digital money should operate alongside conventional bank deposits.

Tokenized deposits differ from stablecoins because they represent money held within the commercial banking system. Stablecoins are generally issued by private companies against reserves and create a separate claim on the issuer.

An April crypto.news report examining the difference between tokenized deposits and stablecoins noted that tokenized deposits retain their status as bank liabilities, with the regulatory and supervisory framework attached to commercial bank money.

The Bank of England has encouraged banks to experiment with tokenized deposits, while its framework for digital money leaves room for regulated stablecoins as another form of payment.

Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden said in May that the central bank wants a system in which traditional deposits, tokenized bank deposits, regulated stablecoins and potentially a retail central bank digital currency can operate alongside each other.

The Bank expects financial institutions to continue developing tokenized deposits and has been working on infrastructure that would allow the deposits to be used for payments between banks instead of remaining limited to customers of the same institution.

At the time, UK regulators were examining how tokenized securities, settlement systems and collateral could fit into regulated markets, with 16 firms preparing services through the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority Digital Securities Sandbox.

The central bank has since changed parts of its approach to stablecoins. Its final policy dropped proposed limits on individual stablecoin holdings and replaced them with an initial £40 billion issuance limit per systemic token.

Under the revised framework, issuers can hold up to 70% of reserves in short term government debt, while the remaining 30% must be held in non interest bearing Bank of England deposits. The central bank had previously proposed individual holding limits partly because officials were concerned that large flows from commercial bank deposits into stablecoins could affect bank funding and credit provision.

Digital bonds are next for the tokenized deposit project

UK Finance now plans to establish a company and develop a rulebook and governance framework as the Great British Tokenised Deposit project moves beyond its pilot phase.

Participating banks plan to issue three digital bonds in the first quarter of 2027 that can be traded and settled using tokenized deposits, Mackintosh told Reuters.

The planned transactions would add a securities settlement use case to the mortgage and person to person payments already tested.

A regulated digital cash leg has been one of the issues facing the UK’s tokenized bond market. The government is separately preparing its Digital Gilt Instrument, or DIGIT, with the first transaction expected by the end of the first quarter of 2027.

The first digital sovereign bond is expected to be issued through HSBC’s Orion distributed ledger platform inside the Bank of England and FCA Digital Securities Sandbox. The UK government has said further digital gilt sales could follow depending on the results of the first issuance.

A separate review of the DIGIT project identified onchain cash settlement as a remaining infrastructure issue, with regulators considering tokenized deposits, regulated stablecoins and central bank money as possible settlement assets.

Lloyds has already tested tokenized deposits in other settings. In August, the bank said it had completed three live transactions through the Bank for International Settlements led Project Agorá, covering sterling, euros and Swiss francs. One test linked foreign exchange conversion, payment and settlement into a single cross currency transaction flow.

Earlier in 2026, Lloyds issued tokenized sterling deposits on the Canton Network and used them to purchase a tokenized UK government bond from Archax, which the bank described as the first UK use of tokenized deposits on a public blockchain.

UK Finance says other markets are studying the project

Interest in the UK model has spread beyond the participating banks, according to Mackintosh.

“In the last 12 months, other jurisdictions have been speaking to us in earnest about what we’ve done, trying to understand how they can now catch up,” she said, citing discussions with counterparts in Europe.

Work on similar interbank infrastructure is underway in the United States. The Clearing House, a banking association and payments company, announced an interbank tokenized deposit project in June.

UK regulators are meanwhile developing rules and infrastructure for tokenized securities alongside the banking sector’s payment experiments. The Bank of England and FCA said in May that firms had asked for more certainty around prudential treatment, tokenized collateral and settlement instruments as financial institutions move distributed ledger projects toward live markets.

Visa has found that U.S. consumer interest in stablecoins rose from 36% to 56% when survey respondents were presented with hypothetical bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance.

Visa’s Money Travels 2026 report, released on Sept. 23, examined how consumers view stablecoins, remittances and payment security. Morning Consult conducted the research for Visa between Feb. 24 and March 2, surveying 2,192 U.S. adults and 45,445 respondents across 20 markets globally.

The 56% figure describes stated willingness under a hypothetical set of protections, not current stablecoin use or an observed adoption rate. Visa said respondents received definitions of stablecoins before answering questions, while the survey relied on self-reported responses.

Visa stablecoin adoption intent rises with added protections

Without the hypothetical safeguards, 36% of U.S. respondents said they would consider using stablecoins. That figure increased to 45% when the payment method was offered through an existing financial provider, according to Visa. Adding bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance pushed stated interest to 56%.

Provider identity ranked ahead of the technology itself for many respondents. Visa found that 64% of Americans said their trust in a payment method depended more on the company offering it. Traditional commercial banks received a 61% trust reading for digital currency services, while global payment networks received 60%.

Stablecoin familiarity remained limited despite growing use of the assets in payment infrastructure. More than half of U.S. respondents, or 56%, said they had never heard of stablecoins before the survey. Visa said some consumers who were familiar with them incorrectly assumed stablecoins move in price like Bitcoin.

Across all 20 markets, 69% of respondents said trust in a new method of moving money depended more on its provider than the underlying technology. The report found that 45% of U.S. respondents would accept a 24-hour transfer delay if it provided stronger fraud protection.

Deposit insurance in the Visa survey remains hypothetical

Visa specifically warned that the protection scenario should not be read as describing current U.S. stablecoin coverage. Its methodology note states that stablecoins are not presently covered by deposit insurance such as FDIC protection.

Federal regulators are still implementing the GENIUS Act framework. An FDIC proposal published in April would establish reserve, capital, redemption and risk-management requirements for payment stablecoin issuers under its supervision. The proposal says deposits held as stablecoin reserves would not receive pass-through insurance for payment stablecoin holders.

Federal Reserve staff made the distinction again in a Sept. 4 research note. The note said payment stablecoins must carry 1:1 reserve backing under the GENIUS Act, while the law does not make the stablecoins themselves federally insured deposits.

The regulatory framework is still moving through implementation. The OCC’s 2026 proposal covers reserve composition, liquidity, capital, redemption and oversight requirements, while a separate interagency proposal addresses customer identification requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers.

Remittance scams are shaping payment preferences

Security concerns extended beyond stablecoins in Visa’s findings. Some 36% of U.S. respondents said they had encountered scams connected to international money transfers, with fake messages, impersonation attempts and fraudulent investment schemes among the reported tactics.

Artificial intelligence appeared in part of that fraud exposure. Visa found that 24% of respondents had received AI-generated messages that appeared genuine, while 44% expressed concern about deepfakes being used to impersonate family members. Across all markets, one in four remittance users reported encountering fraud exposure.

Financial pressure around remittances remained visible in the same study. Roughly one in five senders said they reduced their own spending to support family members abroad. Vira Platonova, global head of Visa Direct, described remittances as “a lifeline” and said Visa’s research pointed to trust as a central concern for users.

Visa is expanding its stablecoin infrastructure

While the new report measures consumer attitudes, Visa has continued building stablecoin services for banks, fintech firms and payment companies. On Sept. 8, the company said more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs operated on its network, with payment volume from those programs rising nearly 200% year over year.

Visa placed its annualized stablecoin settlement volume above $20 billion at that point, more than 15 times the level reported a year earlier. In related coverage, crypto.news reported on Visa’s expansion to 160 stablecoin-linked card programs and the accompanying settlement figures.

The current figure follows a rapid expansion earlier in 2026. Visa said in April that its settlement pilot had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate after adding Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo, bringing supported blockchains to nine. Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar were already part of the program. Visa stablecoin settlement pilot across nine blockchains had reached the $7 billion rate by late April.

July brought another product launch when Visa introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform for financial institutions, fintechs and crypto businesses. The beta platform supports minting, redeeming, holding and transferring Open USD, alongside wallet infrastructure and approval controls.

In related coverage, crypto.news reported on the Visa Stablecoin Platform and Open USD integration after the product was announced.

Visa said the platform initially remains available to selected beta clients. Its current product page says Open USD access carries volume and geographic limits, while API access is still listed as coming later.

RWA perpetual DEX trading volume has reached $365 billion in Q3 2026, rising 32% from the previous quarter as public equities generated nearly half of the activity.

CryptoRank reported the quarterly figures on Sept. 24, placing public-equity perpetual volume at approximately $175 billion, or close to 48% of the total. The quarter still produced growth despite monthly volumes declining during August and September.

The figures refer specifically to real-world asset perpetual contracts traded through decentralized venues. RWA perpetuals provide derivative exposure to assets such as stocks, commodities and indexes without requiring traders to own the referenced assets directly.

RWA perp DEX volume grew despite two monthly declines

Trading activity entered Q3 from a strong base. CryptoRank said July RWA perpetual volume reached a record $141 billion, following a rise from only $23.1 billion at the start of 2026.

August then became the first monthly contraction since January. Volume fell 13.5% to $122 billion, ending the uninterrupted expansion seen during the preceding months. CryptoRank attributed the pullback to renewed demand for crypto assets after Bitcoin and other major tokens posted stronger price moves during August.

September volume declined again, according to CryptoRank’s Sept. 24 update, yet the full quarterly total still reached $365 billion. The 32% quarter-over-quarter increase shows that July’s record activity was large enough to keep Q3 above the prior three-month period despite the later slowdown.

CryptoRank’s monthly series had already shown how quickly the market expanded during the first seven months of 2026. Its earlier research put July activity 513% above the level at the start of the year, with RWA contracts becoming a larger component of decentralized perpetual trading.

Public equities captured nearly half of Q3 volume

Stocks represented the largest RWA perpetual category during the quarter. CryptoRank placed public-equity volume at $175 billion, giving the category nearly 48% of the $365 billion Q3 total.

The concentration in equities follows a change already visible in August. CryptoRank’s monthly report said public equities had become the largest category in its RWA perpetual dataset. On Hyperliquid, stock-linked contracts accounted for 67% of HIP-3 volume during August, moving ahead of commodity contracts.

Available markets have expanded alongside trading activity. CryptoRank reported on Sept. 22 that decentralized perpetual venues now offer more than 1,000 RWA markets, with public equities representing roughly 75% of listings.

The same report placed tokenized stock market capitalization at $3.5 billion. BNB Chain hosted around $1 billion, while Ethereum and Solana followed. Combined, the three networks represented roughly 70% of the market measured by CryptoRank.

RWA perpetuals differ from tokenized stocks themselves. Perpetual contracts generally track the price of an underlying asset through derivatives and do not give holders ownership rights, dividends or voting claims attached to the referenced stock. Crypto.news explained the distinction in its guide to RWA perpetuals covering stocks and commodities.

Perpetual DEX open interest has reached a record

Trading volume has grown alongside outstanding positions. CryptoRank’s Sept. 22 research put total perpetual DEX open interest at a record $19 billion, with overall perpetual open interest across the measured market near $25 billion.

RWA contracts represented roughly 24% of total open interest, up from around 6% at the beginning of 2026. CryptoRank calculated an 18-percentage-point increase during the year as exchanges introduced more markets tied to stocks, commodities and indexes.

Hyperliquid has remained a major venue in the decentralized derivatives market. Current CryptoRank rankings place Hyperliquid Futures at the top of the DEX table by open interest, with billions of dollars in outstanding perpetual positions and hundreds of listed markets.

One day before CryptoRank published the Q3 RWA figures, Hyperliquid’s open interest reached a reported record of $18 billion. As crypto.news reported in its Hyperliquid open-interest record coverage, BTC, ETH and HYPE accounted for roughly $9.33 billion, while HIP-3 continued hosting contracts linked to stocks, commodities and indexes.

Equity markets are expanding through HIP-3 and tokenization

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 infrastructure has contributed to stock-linked perpetual activity by letting independent teams deploy perpetual markets. Crypto.news previously reported that TradeXYZ processed $202.36 billion during Q2, based on an independent Hyperliquid Research Collective report.

Equity perpetuals generated $58.9 billion across 55 markets on TradeXYZ during Q2, a 377% quarter-over-quarter increase, according to that report. TradeXYZ’s share of HIP-3 volume increased from 84.5% to 95.1% during the quarter.

On-chain stock activity is developing outside perpetual contracts as well. In June, Ondo Finance extended tokenized U.S. stocks to Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM, initially supporting 35 names including Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet and several ETFs, as crypto.news reported in its HyperEVM coverage.

Base has recorded another source of tokenized-equity activity. Token Terminal data cited by crypto.news put 30-day tokenized-stock DEX volume on Base at $730.9 million by Sept. 12, after daily volume reached $100 million. Aerodrome processed $557.1 million of the measured monthly activity.

U.S. access to many tokenized equity products remains restricted. Crypto.news reported Sept. 21 that TD Cowen expects limited domestic demand even as the regulatory framework develops, noting that U.S. investors already have established access to conventional listed equities.

Separately, Coinbase’s Base-native stock tokens remain unavailable to U.S. persons under the company’s current Regulation S structure. Coinbase expanded its lineup in September after its first group of tokenized equities produced $227.7 million in decentralized exchange volume over roughly 30 days, according to Token Terminal data cited by crypto.news.

Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) has fallen nearly 10% in 24 hours to around $0.0098 on Sept. 24, even as the token remains roughly 38% higher over the past seven days.

CoinGecko data shows PENGU trading around $0.0098 during the latest check, with a 24-hour range between $0.009478 and $0.01111. Its market capitalization stood near $619 million, while 24-hour trading volume was approximately $376 million.

The token had climbed from $0.00685 on Sept. 15 to above $0.010 earlier this week, CoinGecko historical data shows. PENGU reached the $0.011 area before sellers pushed the price back under the psychologically watched $0.010 level.

PENGU price has slipped below $0.01 after its rally

The latest decline follows several days of strong gains. CoinGecko recorded PENGU at $0.00726 on Sept. 17 and $0.01003 by Sept. 22, showing how quickly the token advanced before the latest pullback.

CoinGecko still placed PENGU’s seven-day return near 38.2% during the Sept. 24 check. The token remained approximately 85% below its $0.06845 all-time high despite the weekly recovery, while its circulating supply stood at roughly 62.86 billion tokens.

No single verified project-specific event reviewed for this report established the cause of Thursday’s drop. Market data instead shows the decline occurring after PENGU reached its highest price in several months and after derivatives participation began cooling.

PENGU open interest has fallen as traders reduce exposure

A Sept. 24 CoinGlass snapshot showed derivatives volume down 12.68% at approximately $536.67 million, while open interest declined 11.66% to roughly $154.03 million. A later live reading placed open interest near $156.47 million and 24-hour futures volume around $576.31 million, showing how quickly the figures can change intraday.

CoinGlass recorded nearly $1.94 million in PENGU futures liquidations over 24 hours during that later reading. Falling open interest means fewer futures positions remain outstanding, although CoinGlass notes that position closures can result from voluntary exits or forced liquidations and do not identify a single directional cause.

Spot flows looked less decisive. The Sept. 24 CoinGlass netflow reading supplied with the market data stood near +$88,550, meaning exchange inflows were only slightly above outflows at that point. The recent flow series contained both positive and negative readings without a sustained run of large positive inflows.

Technical indicators remain positive but momentum is stretched

PENGU’s 14-period RSI stood at 67.15 in the chart data provided for Sept. 24. The reading remains above the neutral 50 level and below the conventional 70 overbought threshold, showing strong momentum without formally entering the usual overbought zone. The RSI moving average sat near 50.56.

The Aroon Oscillator was approximately +57.14, indicating that recent highs have occurred more prominently than recent lows over its 14-period window. Both measures remained positive despite the price rejection above $0.010.

The $0.0095 region therefore sits close to the token’s Sept. 24 intraday low of $0.009478 recorded by CoinGecko. A loss of that area would place PENGU below the short-term support identified by CoinLore, while a recovery above $0.0105 would move price back toward its recent highs.

Analysts are watching $0.011 before higher PENGU targets

Crypto analyst Ali Charts has pointed to several weekly indicators that he views as constructive. His Sept. 22 analysis identified contracting Bollinger Bands, consecutive Tom DeMark Sequential buy signals, a bullish Parabolic SAR flip and a SuperTrend buy signal.

Ali wrote “PENGU BULL RUN IS ABOUT TO START” while placing the midpoint of a parallel channel around $0.025 and its upper boundary close to $0.045. Both levels are analyst projections, not confirmed price outcomes. Independent coverage of his chart documented the same Bollinger Band, TD Sequential, Parabolic SAR and SuperTrend readings.

Two days later, Ali compared PENGU’s structure with an earlier PEPE cycle and wrote “PENGU ABOUT TO EXPLODE.” His comparison relies on a historical price fractal, so a similar past pattern does not establish that PENGU will follow PEPE’s previous trajectory.

The Senate stopped short of debating a federal crypto market structure bill. A week later, the CFTC chair was still laying out plans for tokenized collateral and round-the-clock markets. The agencies can act under existing law, but their records show how far each action actually reaches.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants markets ready for tokenized collateral and 24-hour trading. Its chair, Michael Selig, said as much at a Treasury market conference on Sept. 22, one week after the Senate blocked debate on the CLARITY Act. He described work on stablecoins as derivatives collateral and said some products, including crypto, may suit continuous trading. The agency had already sent a crypto market measure to White House review. Selig’s remarks were a statement of direction, not the publication of that measure.

The order of events matters. The Securities and Exchange Commission had proposed crypto offering rules before the Senate vote. It issued a limited exemption for tokenized stock trading two days afterward. The CFTC filed a separate measure for preliminary review the same day, as crypto.news reported when the CFTC submission appeared. Washington is writing parts of a rulebook while the bill that would set its statutory foundation remains stalled.

How much of a market can those parts govern? The public documents give a more useful answer than the shorthand that regulators have replaced Congress. One action interprets existing securities law. Another proposes exemptions for raising money. A third permits a specific way to trade tokenized stocks. The CFTC’s next rule has not yet been released for public inspection. None is the spot digital commodity market law contemplated by CLARITY.

The Senate rejected debate, not a final crypto law

On Sept. 15, the Senate voted on cloture on a motion to proceed to H.R. 3633. The official roll call records 49 votes for cloture, 50 against and one senator not voting. Sixty votes were required. Senators did not vote on final passage or settle the bill’s provisions through floor amendments.

Some accounts inverted the numbers, describing 50 votes in favor and 49 against. The Senate record says the reverse. Either count falls short of 60, but a feature about who can write law should get the legislature’s own vote right. The 49 supporting senators were 11 votes short of the threshold. Four Republicans voted against the motion, including Thom Tillis, whose procedural switch left a route to seek reconsideration. The bill remained available for further negotiation; its Sept. 15 path to debate was blocked.

CLARITY aimed to divide oversight of digital assets and their markets between the SEC and CFTC, including a registration structure for digital commodity intermediaries. Congress had been considering a more complete answer to questions that agencies now confront through rules, interpretations and orders. The House passed its version in July 2025. Its later Senate text changed during negotiations, so an account of a disputed September provision must specify which version it describes. The Senate-reported version remains a public reference, but it should not be mistaken for every late negotiating draft.

The disagreement was political and substantive. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott said after the vote that the SEC and CFTC should set rules until Congress legislates. Democratic Senator Mark Warner said he wanted digital asset legislation, but would not advance this version without stronger restrictions on senior officials profiting from policies affecting their crypto holdings. Banking organizations separately pressed for tighter restrictions on rewards associated with holding stablecoins, saying deposit competition could affect lending. Those groups made a policy argument; no projected deposit loss should be treated as an observed outcome.

Seven Democratic senators who opposed the motion said the following day that they remained committed to bipartisan legislation. Calling the bill law would be false. Calling it permanently dead would go beyond the vote.

The SEC can interpret a transaction without licensing its market

The regulatory work did not begin on Sept. 15. On March 11, the SEC and CFTC signed a coordination agreement covering shared definitions, examinations and enforcement. Six days later, the SEC issued interpretive release Nos. 33-11412 and 34-105020, with accompanying CFTC guidance. It described digital commodities, collectibles, tools, stablecoins and digital securities. It addressed staking, mining, airdrops and wrapping, as well as when a nonsecurity crypto asset can be sold as part of an investment contract. The agencies’ March interpretation was an exercise of their existing authority.

The distinction between an asset and a transaction is central. A token need not itself be a security for a promoter’s offer of it to involve an investment contract. The SEC’s description of an asset does not remove the securities laws from every transaction in that asset. Nor does calling an asset a digital commodity hand the CFTC full supervision of every spot exchange that lists it. An earlier crypto.news examination of the SEC’s classification of XRP addresses the separate question of how long an agency interpretation may last.

Consider a platform that lists a digital commodity for ordinary purchase and another platform that offers leveraged positions in the same asset. The asset label may be the same. The activity and applicable jurisdiction are different. The CFTC regulates derivatives and certain leveraged retail commodity transactions under existing law. For ordinary spot digital commodities, it has described its federal role principally as enforcement against fraud and manipulation, without general day-to-day supervision of spot exchanges. Its own account of the distinction is unusually clear.

That is the gap CLARITY was designed to address. The SEC and CFTC can coordinate their interpretations. They cannot create an unrestricted federal spot market mandate merely by agreeing which tokens count as commodities. An agency can regulate conduct within the perimeter Congress gave it. It cannot vote itself the rest of the perimeter.

There is still practical value in the interpretation. An issuer deciding whether a proposed token sale needs securities registration now has a published view from the SEC. A derivatives venue knows the CFTC says it will administer the Commodity Exchange Act consistently with that view. The treatment could shape business decisions immediately. It is still different from a new statute governing intermediaries across the spot market. A court or later commission can test or revisit an agency’s reading of existing law.

Four records show why the ‘new rulebook’ is still uneven

The primary documents can be sorted by two questions: has the action taken effect, and does it govern ordinary crypto spot trading? The answer changes in every row.

One of these measures is an effective exemption. One remains a proposal. Another is a public interpretation, and the fourth is a filing title and review status. Describing all four as ‘rules now in force’ would turn a process into a result. More tellingly, the effective exemption concerns shares, which remain securities, while the largest proposed jurisdictional change in CLARITY concerned digital commodity markets. The most visible new trading permission sits on a different side of the SEC-CFTC divide.

The CFTC review record names ‘Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,’ identifies the agency, and labels its stage ‘Prerule.’ It gives a Sept. 17 receipt date. It does not disclose draft provisions or show a commission vote on a proposed or final rule. That small entry proves that a measure entered review. It does not prove what legal powers the eventual text will claim.

Selig offered a possible route in August. He said staff were examining whether existing registrants and unregistered crypto exchanges could be designated as a type of CFTC designated contract market, with leveraged or margined crypto trading under tailored rules. His remarks also described working with onchain software developers. They are evidence of his intended approach, not a substitute for the unreleased CFTC text. Whether the agency’s eventual proposal fits its existing authority depends on its actual provisions.

The narrower route may still change a great deal for firms that want to offer margined crypto trading in the United States. It would not automatically cover every app where a customer buys and withdraws an unleveraged token. That missing customer, venue and transaction sit at the center of the congressional question.

The SEC’s $75 million route is a proposal with an expiry problem

The SEC’s Aug. 18 proposal would give eligible projects two tailored ways to offer investment contracts involving crypto assets without registering the offering. One would allow up to $5 million over a four-year period. Another would permit up to $75 million in each 12-month period, with financial statements and ongoing reporting alongside required disclosures. It proposes a conditional safe harbor concerning when the related investment contract no longer applies. The published proposal sets an Oct. 20 comment deadline. A crypto.news account of the offering proposal examines those routes in more detail.

The proposal does not say that every token becomes exempt from securities law after four years. Its application depends on the facts of an issuer’s commitments and compliance with its conditions. It does not license an exchange to ignore laws governing securities activity. Antifraud provisions remain relevant. And none of the proposed fundraising routes can be used merely because the SEC has announced them; a final rule would have to follow the comment process.

The policy choice is significant. Projects often raise money while a team is still promising to build the network on which a token’s value might depend. The SEC is trying to specify how that fundraising stage might be conducted and, under stated conditions, how the associated investment contract could end. The proposal answers a question about capital raising. It does not supply a federal registration system for the entire digital commodity spot market.

That distinction has an institutional consequence. A company can plan a token offering around a published proposal only provisionally. It can plan around an effective rule more confidently, while still accounting for future changes and court review. A national law fixing the agencies’ mandates would require another institution to change it. Industry advocates want the agency work to advance precisely because waiting for that institution has not produced a bill. The staged process creates rules sooner in some corners and leaves others open.

A five-year stock exemption has a narrower address

The SEC’s Sept. 17 order, release No. 34-106402, is the most concrete post-vote action. It temporarily exempts qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues from the Exchange Act definition of ‘exchange’ for a particular model of permissioned automated market maker trading in tokenized National Market System stocks. It grants separate conditional relief to certain liquidity providers from the definition of ‘dealer.’ The 60-page order states that the exemptions run until Sept. 17, 2031, unless the commission changes them under its authority.

Stockholders must have the same rights and privileges as holders of an equivalent traditional share. The venue faces limits on symbols and trading volume, must stop trading when the underlying stock is halted, and must allow an issuer to object when an unaffiliated third party tokenizes its shares. The smart contracts used for the trading model must be public and auditable on a public, permissionless ledger, while access to the venue is restricted to approved participants. The order does not exempt fraud or manipulation.

Those conditions illustrate both the potential and the boundary of agency action. An SEC exemption can open a defined route for trading securities without waiting for Congress to rewrite every exchange rule. It does not make all decentralized trading lawful or designate the CFTC as supervisor of every crypto asset. SEC Chair Paul Atkins called the measure a bridge and said durable rulemaking would need to follow. A crypto.news report on the tokenized stock exemption looks at the possible commercial users. A bridge is useful. It is not the destination.

The order deserves scrutiny on its own merits, too. Its volume caps are meant to limit disruptions if prices in an automated pool diverge from shares trading in conventional markets. Disclosure and records conditions give the SEC a way to see how the model operates. Whether actual venues satisfy the conditions, attract activity and preserve shareholder rights is an observable question, not an assumption to be filled in by the agency announcement.

Supporters of agency action have a strong practical case

Scott’s call for regulators to act did not require the claim that legislation was unnecessary. Selig himself said in August that a statute was the strongest way to fix the SEC-CFTC jurisdictional line and set principles for spot crypto markets. He nonetheless directed CFTC staff to examine rules under current authority. Those positions can coexist: a firm needs to know what rules apply to a proposed product now, even when Congress might later change the governing law.

Atkins made a related case for using a temporary SEC exemption while the commission studies tokenized stock trading. The Sept. 17 order imposes participant screening, trading limits, disclosure, records, issuer rights and the ordinary securities law bans on fraud and manipulation. It is an intervention with conditions, not an unregulated free pass. His argument is that an observed market can inform permanent rules better than a market that cannot start.

Coin Center, a crypto policy organization, made a different case within the same debate. Its March submission urged broad prospective rulemaking over individual relief, arguing that selective exemptions can favor applicants with the resources to seek them and leave decentralized projects outside. That criticism does not show the SEC order is improper. It identifies a question the order cannot settle: whether other workable models get an equivalent path.

Warner’s opposition to the Senate bill is another constraint on a simple ‘Congress failed, agencies solved it’ account. He said the dispute over ethics requirements involving elected officials prevented his support despite progress on national security issues. Rules from financial regulators about trading venues do not resolve the elected-official ethics issue that helped stop the vote. Banking groups’ concerns about rewards tied to stablecoin balances likewise involve a separate dispute over the boundary between payments and deposit competition. The missing legislation is missing for reasons the agencies’ crypto rulemaking cannot erase.

The decisive test is an ordinary spot trade

Take a customer who deposits dollars on an exchange, buys an unleveraged digital commodity and withdraws it to a wallet. The March interpretation helps describe the asset and the legal treatment of a particular sale. The SEC’s offering proposal could matter to an earlier fundraising transaction involving that asset. The tokenized stock order is irrelevant to this trade. The CFTC’s unpublished measure cannot yet be applied to it, and Selig’s public example centers on leveraged or margined trading.

What federally supervises that ordinary spot exchange’s routine operations? Existing anti-fraud powers, applicable state regimes and other federal obligations do not amount to the dedicated CFTC spot-market registration and supervision framework CLARITY sought to create. This is the part of the rulebook agencies cannot simply announce into existence. The difference is more than durability: it is the scope of the legal authority available in the first place.

That customer example is also a way to judge the feature’s claim. If Congress passes a law assigning broad spot digital commodity oversight, the gap narrows by statute. A crypto.news look at Bitcoin after the Senate vote addresses the asset’s current classification. If the CFTC publishes a measure that identifies an existing legal basis covering more of the ordinary spot transaction than Selig’s August remarks suggested, its precise terms will need to be examined. The Sept. 17 review listing alone does not answer either point.

The limits run in both directions. The failure of CLARITY did not repeal securities or commodities law, undo the SEC’s March interpretation, or stop agencies from proposing and issuing measures within their authority. The SEC stock exemption is real. So are its boundaries. The CFTC may yet publish a consequential proposal. Until it does, a filed title should not be asked to carry the weight of a completed rule.

What to watch

The CFTC proposal: Watch for publication of the text tied to RIN 3038-AF80 after executive review. Its treatment of unleveraged spot trading is the most direct test of its reach.

The SEC comment deadline: Comments on Regulation Crypto Assets are due Oct. 20, 2026, under the published proposal. Any subsequent final text could change the $5 million and $75 million routes.

The tokenized stock venues: Public venue notices, trading volume and issuer objections will show whether the SEC’s five-year exemption becomes a used market or remains an available permission.

The Senate’s next motion: A renewed effort to proceed to H.R. 3633, revised bill text or a new bipartisan agreement would change the legislative outlook. The Sept. 15 cloture vote did not decide final passage.

The spot exchange question: Any proposed CFTC registration requirements should be read for the products and transactions they cover, not only the number of exchanges that might apply.

FAQ

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of September 24, 2025.

NYSE and Blockchain.com have agreed to explore distributing tokenized U.S. shares to a global crypto audience. The deal leaves the harder questions for the platform’s launch: whose record proves ownership, who decides who can trade, and how the new market stays tied to the shares beneath it.

The New York Stock Exchange and Blockchain.com signed a memorandum of understanding on Sept. 23 to explore giving Blockchain.com customers access to tokenized U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds. The route would run through NYSE’s planned digital alternative trading system, subject to required regulatory approvals. It is a plan for distribution, not a launch of stock trading to the company’s more than 44 million confirmed accounts.

NYSE is building a market that could operate at all hours and settle trades onchain. Blockchain.com brings a customer network already accustomed to digital assets. The announcement does not identify the final custody chain for each share, say which customers will qualify, or publish the terms under which a token could be converted back into a conventional holding. Those details decide what a buyer owns.

The answer will differ by product. A token can be the security recorded on a company’s shareholder file. It can represent an entitlement to a share held through an intermediary. It can instead be a contract that tracks a share’s price. All three can display a ticker on a phone. Only the first two can potentially carry the underlying shareholder interest, and even there the legal path to voting or dividends needs to be specified. The Securities and Exchange Commission drew those distinctions in a January staff statement on tokenized securities.

The new agreement makes an old stock market question visible in a new format. A blockchain can record a transfer. It does not, on its own, determine which entity owes the holder a dividend, who can correct a mistaken transfer, or whose ledger a company treats as its shareholder record.

The Sept. 23 deal is a distribution agreement, not an open market

The parties called their agreement a memorandum of understanding. Their joint announcement says Blockchain.com’s user base would gain access to tokenized listed equities and ETFs through NYSE’s previously announced digital ATS after necessary approvals. The agreement covers a second business line: ICE Data Services plans to distribute Blockchain.com’s crypto data, while Blockchain.com plans to bring ICE and NYSE exchange data into its app.

That data arrangement could start informing users before they can buy any tokenized stock through the proposed venue. The announcement offers no launch date, approved securities list, country-by-country access rules or account-level eligibility figures. Forty-four million confirmed accounts measure an existing customer base. They do not measure approved brokerage accounts, funded investors, stock orders or future onchain volume.

The distinction matters because earlier ICE announcements already described several pieces of the same developing platform. In January, NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange outlined a digital trading platform combining its Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based systems for custody and settlement. In March, NYSE named Securitize as its first prospective digital transfer agent able to mint blockchain-native securities for corporate and ETF issuers. The Sept. 23 deal adds a distributor and market data connection to that proposed structure. It does not say Blockchain.com becomes the transfer agent, the securities issuer or the operator of NYSE’s ATS.

NYSE Group President Lynn Martin told lawmakers on Sept. 2 that the planned platform would link digital equities directly to underlying shares and preserve voting rights, dividends and corporate actions. That is NYSE’s stated design. The signed customer terms, transfer records and regulatory approvals would show how it operates for a buyer. It is too early to treat the design statement as evidence that a particular token or distribution channel has gone live.

A crypto.news report on the new NYSE agreement covered the announcement and noted that the companies had not said their arrangement was approved under the SEC’s separate innovation exemption. The useful question now sits underneath the partnership: which existing institutions will keep authority over the shares when trading moves across a blockchain?