For years, the global conversation around blockchain has focused on regulation.

Should cryptocurrencies be regulated?

How should stablecoins be supervised?

Which licensing regime should apply to crypto service providers?

These questions remain important.

But they are no longer the most interesting ones.

A recently published document by the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future, jointly established by the U.S. Treasury and HM Treasury, reveals that the United States and the United Kingdom are already discussing something much more ambitious:

How to jointly build the financial infrastructure of the digital economy.

This represents a significant shift in perspective.

The debate is moving beyond crypto regulation and toward the architecture of future financial markets.

Regulation is no longer enough

Europe deserves considerable recognition for adopting MiCA, the world’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto-assets.

Legal certainty is essential.

Markets cannot mature without clear rules.

However, regulation alone does not create financial leadership.

Infrastructure does.

Reading the recommendations issued by the Transatlantic Taskforce reveals a remarkably different mindset.

Rather than asking how to regulate digital assets, the United States and the United Kingdom are asking:

How can tokenized finance become operational?

Building tokenized financial markets

One of the Taskforce’s first recommendations is particularly revealing.

Rather than creating another regulatory committee, both governments propose establishing a private sector-led experimentation group dedicated to testing real cross-border use cases for tokenized assets and identifying the legal and technical standards needed to scale tokenized finance internationally.

This is an important institutional signal.

Innovation is no longer viewed as something regulators merely supervise.

It becomes something governments actively facilitate.

The objective is practical implementation rather than theoretical regulation.

Stablecoins are becoming financial infrastructure

Perhaps the most significant part of the document concerns stablecoins.

The Taskforce recommends closer regulatory alignment regarding stablecoins while recognizing their growing importance for cross-border financial markets.

Even more importantly, it explicitly supports a future in which:

• stablecoins;
• tokenized bank deposits;
• and other forms of digital money

coexist within a multi-money ecosystem.

This represents a profound institutional evolution.

For years, public debate framed stablecoins as competitors to traditional banking.

The new vision is very different.

Banks.

Stablecoins.

Tokenized deposits.

Central bank money.

All become complementary components of a single programmable financial infrastructure.

This is precisely the direction that many blockchain practitioners have anticipated for years.

Tokenization is becoming mainstream

The recommendations also address regulatory coordination concerning tokenized assets.

Among the issues identified are:

• settlement finality for tokenized securities;
• recognition of tokenized collateral;
• the use of stablecoins and tokenized money market funds within financial market infrastructure.

This demonstrates that tokenization is no longer confined to blockchain startups.

It is increasingly entering the core of capital markets.

The conversation has evolved.

The question is no longer whether securities will become tokenized.

It is how financial infrastructure should adapt once they are.

A common language for digital finance

Another notable aspect of the document is its emphasis on regulatory cooperation rather than regulatory competition.

The United States and the United Kingdom seek common approaches, flexible regulatory mechanisms and shared technical standards capable of reducing cross-border fragmentation.

Digital finance is global by nature.

If tokenized assets are expected to circulate internationally, legal fragmentation quickly becomes an obstacle.

Regulatory interoperability may therefore become as important as technological interoperability.

What this means for Europe

For Europe, these developments should serve as an important reminder.

MiCA provides legal certainty.

That remains an enormous achievement.

But legal certainty should become the starting point rather than the final objective.

The next challenge is competitiveness.

Europe needs:

• globally competitive stablecoins;
• tokenized deposits issued by European banks;
• tokenized capital markets;
• regulated DeFi;
• legal infrastructure capable of supporting programmable finance.

Otherwise, Europe risks becoming the jurisdiction that regulates digital finance while other regions build it.

The missing layer: legal infrastructure

From BACS’ perspective, one important element remains largely absent from international policy discussions.

Most initiatives focus on:

• regulation;
• technical standards;
• financial infrastructure.

Far fewer address what happens when disputes arise.

Who resolves conflicts involving tokenized assets?

How can legal decisions be executed directly on-chain?

How can DAOs exercise legally enforceable rights?

How should stablecoins respond to legally valid freezing or transfer orders?

This is where digital arbitration, legal oracles, and digital enforcement become essential.

Financial infrastructure cannot function efficiently without legal infrastructure.

Beyond financial innovation

The recommendations published by the United States and the United Kingdom demonstrate something larger than regulatory cooperation.

They reveal a shared understanding that blockchain is becoming part of mainstream financial architecture.

Tokenization.

Stablecoins.

Digital money.

Cross-border financial infrastructure.

These are no longer experimental technologies.

They are gradually becoming institutional infrastructure.

As argued throughout Bitcoin Digital Law, the digital economy is not simply creating new financial products.

It is rebuilding the institutions through which property, money, contracts and economic rights are created, governed and enforced.

Conclusion

The most important message contained in the Transatlantic Taskforce recommendations is not regulatory.

It is strategic.

The United States and the United Kingdom are no longer asking whether digital finance should exist.

They are asking how to build it together.

Europe has already demonstrated global leadership through MiCA.

The next step should be equally ambitious:

not only regulating the digital economy,

but helping build its financial and legal infrastructure.

Because the future will not belong to the jurisdictions that regulate blockchain best.

It will belong to those that build the institutions upon which the digital economy will operate.