U.S. financial firms are developing their own standards for crypto compliance, custody and tokenized assets after Congress failed to advance a broad digital-asset framework, according to CoinDesk. The resulting system is fragmented, costly and still dependent in places on regulatory permissions that could change.
Firms move ahead without a federal framework
The Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15 left the United States without comprehensive federal legislation covering digital assets. Two days later, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an “innovation exemption” that permits certain venues to trade tokenized U.S.-listed stocks onchain.
That exemption gives some market participants room to develop products, but it is not a permanent statute. It could be narrowed or withdrawn, leaving institutions to consider how much infrastructure to build around a temporary regulatory basis. Meanwhile, regulators and companies are addressing immediate problems through existing federal and state-level rules.
The issue was discussed at a Crain’s New York Business event, where executives described an industry building for current conditions rather than waiting for Washington to settle the rules. Their work covers tokenization, compliance, settlement and cybersecurity—areas that will shape how financial advisers and their clients interact with digital assets.
Adam Schumann, vice president of legal at OKX, said U.S. companies must navigate federal statutes and agencies alongside state laws and regulators. Because those authorities do not move at the same pace, firms may achieve broad consistency but not complete uniformity. In practice, they address requirements state by state and country by country while agencies respond to the most immediate gaps.
Compliance and infrastructure remain fragmented
That regulatory patchwork has become a significant operating expense. Aravind Raju, chief financial officer of Uphold, said compliance is among the company’s largest departments because it develops solutions tailored to individual state requirements. He said greater clarity and alignment could eventually allow companies to redirect some of those resources.
For financial advisers, the broader implication is that compliance is not an incidental feature of a digital-asset platform. It is a continuing cost and an important distinction between providers. Firms that can manage differing requirements while maintaining operational controls may be better positioned as tokenized products develop.
The industry’s response has not been a single shared system. Instead, many institutions launched private networks during the year for tokenized assets, stablecoins and securities ledgers. These closed networks often cannot communicate easily, creating additional technical and operational work.
Lewis Tuff, chief executive of clearing and settlement technology company Twilight, said institutions are consequently rebuilding many of the same connections separately. The lack of interoperability means that the expansion of private infrastructure has not necessarily reduced duplication across the market.
Risk controls are shifting toward separation
The structure of crypto businesses is also changing. Earlier firms often combined trading, custody and clearing in one organization. Traditional custodians now hold digital assets, while execution venues are increasingly separate from the institutions safeguarding those assets.
Separating these functions can prevent one organization from controlling every critical role and reduce the risk that a single failure affects the entire chain. Compliance and security practices are changing as well. Rather than relying mainly on annual attestations or periodic reviews, firms are moving toward continuous monitoring that examines transactions as they occur.
These developments do not depend on Congress passing a new law. They are, however, creating practices that could influence any future framework: verified counterparties, defined boundaries between trading and custody, and compliance processes that operate continuously rather than at fixed review points.
What advisers should check before trusting a tokenized platform
The absence of settled federal investor protections makes the legal and operational basis of a platform especially important. Diego Grassano, commercial director at Shyft and chief product officer at Lumia, said institutions should be cautious about committing long-term capital to infrastructure that relies on temporary exemptions or state-level workarounds.
He said a platform should have a credible plan if its permissions change or expire. Important questions include whether ownership rights are clear, whether custody is segregated and whether investors have a tested way to exit and recover their assets.
Grassano also warned that connecting private blockchains can create security and operational risks. One approach he described is to keep the legally recognized ownership record on the original chain while allowing backed, redeemable representations to circulate on another network. Eligibility and transfer restrictions would need to apply across both systems.
For advisers assessing a tokenized product, his basic questions are straightforward:
- What exactly does the client own, and how can the client recover the money?
- Who holds the assets, and who independently verifies the reported figures?
- What happens if the platform fails?
- What fees, conflicts of interest and withdrawal restrictions apply?
If the ownership structure, risks and recovery process cannot be explained clearly, the due diligence is incomplete.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar data at 2026-10-15 20:59 +03:30 shows Walrus (WAL) at $0.0513385649, down 14.93% over 24 hours but up 53.29% over seven days. ONEchain (ONE) was $0.1068360041, down 2.71% in 24 hours and 19.45% over seven days. Ontology Gas (ONG) stood at $0.0820695554, down 0.6% over 24 hours and 5.27% over seven days.
A separate Moneyiar reading for Harmony (ONE), timestamped 2026-10-05 11:34 +03:30, showed a price of $0.0024252125, a 24-hour gain of 1.74% and a seven-day decline of 1.97%.
The longer-term direction of the market infrastructure remains unsettled. Raju said he expects the industry may eventually stop using the word “crypto” as tokenized Treasuries and money-market funds become routine. Whether self-imposed standards become a bridge to legislation or effectively replace parts of it remains unresolved, but firms are building the systems now.
