61 Israeli clients should not read the latest US moves on tokenization as just another crypto debate. They are better understood as an early attempt by a large financial system to move assets, ownership records, and parts of market activity onto digital rails. US regulators are also becoming more organized. Instead of treating each new product as a one-off, they are starting to sort digital assets into clearer categories, explain when older rules still control, and adapt safety rules to digital markets. For Israel, the lesson is simple: success will not come from adding a token label to an asset. It will come from building systems that protect the buyer’s rights, satisfy regulators, and work reliably in the real world. In short, the US is treating tokenization less as a speculative craze and more as a practical redesign of financial infrastructure. Recent US steps mostly move in the same direction. US securities regulators have made clear that turning a share or bond into a digital instrument does not take it outside the securities rulebook, although the design of the token can change what the buyer actually holds. Banking regulators have taken a similar approach: a digital version may be treated like the traditional asset only if it gives the holder the same rights. At the same time, the SEC and CFTC are working more closely together on definitions, oversight, information sharing, and enforcement, including through Project Crypto and their new memorandum of understanding. The CFTC has also started explaining how some digital assets, including certain stablecoins and tokenized collateral, may fit into derivatives markets under specific conditions. From crypto trend to financial plumbing For Israeli companies, the main point is that tokenization is really about the plumbing of finance in the capital markets. The big questions are practical: who owns the asset, how that ownership is recorded, whether it can back a loan, what value regulators give it, whether it can be used to settle trades, and which regulator oversees it. That is far more useful than simply asking whether the technology is innovative. In the US, the response is increasingly coming through formal rules, special permissions, staff guidance, and public Q&As that try to fit new technology into normal market safeguards. That is also why the US debate now involves far more than crypto startups and securities lawyers. It also involves bank regulators, clearing bodies, transfer agents, brokers, futures firms, and market infrastructure providers. Recent moves by the Depository Trust Company, Nasdaq, and the New York Stock Exchange suggest that tokenization is moving toward the financial mainstream. International standard-setters have also entered the picture, showing that this is no longer a niche US issue. For Israelis, that is a strong sign that tokenization is becoming a serious finance topic, not just an experiment in innovation labs. Digital packaging does not change the asset One simple idea sits at the center of recent US policy: turning a security into a digital token does not change its basic legal nature. In the view of US securities regulators, if something is a security before tokenization, it is still a security afterward. But different designs can give buyers different rights, so not every tokenized product should be treated as the same thing. That is why regulators spend so much time separating one model from another. In some models, the company that issued the original asset is also behind the digital version. In others, another business creates a token linked to an existing asset. That distinction matters. Sometimes the buyer may truly own a digital version of the underlying asset, and sometimes the buyer may only have an indirect claim or price exposure. Regulators have also warned that these design choices can affect ownership, transfer rights, and how much real control the holder has under US law. For Israelis, the practical question is not simply whether an asset can be tokenized. It is whether the person buying the token truly owns something enforceable, and what happens if there is a dispute, a failure, or an insolvency. US — CRYPTOCURRENCIES
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