Digital asset compliance gaps firms can’t ignore

August 05, 2026

After years of enforcement-led regulation with no formal rulebook, US financial regulators have finally drawn the map. On 17 March 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published Interpretive Release No. 33-11412, a 68-page joint statement establishing the first formal taxonomy for classifying digital assets under federal law. Five categories. Clear jurisdictional lines.

For compliance officers across the financial services industry, the publication marks a turning point.

MCO (MyComplianceOffice) recently delved into the regulation and the five digital asset categories.

The five categories

The framework classifies digital assets by their characteristics, function, and use, and not by how issuers choose to label them. Digital commodities, which derive value from the operation of a digital asset system rather than managerial effort, fall under CFTC oversight. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Chainlink are among 16 assets named explicitly in this category, MCO said.

Digital collectibles, including NFTs and memecoins, along with digital tools such as membership tokens and credentials, are not securities. Stablecoins meeting the requirements of the GENIUS Act are carved out as payment instruments regulated by banking authorities.

The fifth category is where the compliance burden lies. Digital securities are digital assets issued as investment contracts with expectations of profit and explicitly include tokenised securities: traditional financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, and ETFs that are issued, traded, and settled on a blockchain.

Tokenisation is already live

The tokenised securities market has moved well beyond concept, MCO stated. In March 2026, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposed rule change to enable tokenised securities trading, built on the Depository Trust Company’s (DTC) tokenisation pilot programme, which has operated under a no-action letter since December 2025.

Eligible instruments include the Russell 1000, US Treasuries, and major index ETFs. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) followed within days, partnering with Securitize to build a new blockchain-based trading platform, naming Securitize as the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint tokenised stocks and ETFs.

Third-party custodial models are already driving significant volume. Kraken’s xStocks product, built on the infrastructure of its Backed Finance acquisition, has surpassed $25bn in cumulative trading volume since its June 2025 launch. The product currently covers 100 tokenised US stocks and ETFs, with plans to expand to 500 by the end of the year.

Dinari, the first platform to secure a US broker-dealer registration for tokenised equities, operates a similar model across multiple blockchains with partnerships including Gemini and Flow Traders.

The operational gaps firms must close

The SEC has been explicit: tokenisation changes the infrastructure, not the regulatory perimeter, MCO said. A tokenised stock is still a stock for the purposes of personal trading obligations. Restricted-list requirements, pre-clearance rules, and material non-public information (MNPI) prohibitions apply regardless of whether an instrument trades on Nasdaq or on-chain.

Three operational gaps demand immediate attention. First, restricted list architecture: ticker-matching systems will not catch tokenised equivalents trading under different symbols on venues outside the traditional equity-feed universe. Lists must be issuer-based, with mappings to every known instrument form. Second, reportable account definitions: policies that reference “brokerage accounts” must now explicitly name tokenised-asset platforms, on-chain wallet addresses used for holding tokenised securities, and accounts at venues such as Kraken xStocks, Dinari, Securitize, and Ondo. Third, data feeds: traditional monitoring relies on standardised custodial feeds, but some tokenised platforms now offer compliance-grade integrations while others require manual attestation supplemented by blockchain analytics. A hybrid approach is realistic for the next 18 to 24 months.

The five-category framework delivers the clarity the industry has long sought. The compliance challenge now is not ambiguity and it is whether programmes have the operational reach to see and govern the instruments that are already trading.

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