Crypto's next regulatory test isn't rules, it's coordination

The debate over whether to regulate crypto is over; the debate over whether the resulting rules can work together across borders is just beginning, Hedera Chief Policy Officer Nilmini Rubin argues in an August 14 analysis, published by Finance Magnates.

The regulatory scaffolding Rubin references is now largely in place on both sides of the Atlantic. The European Union's MiCA transitional period ended on July 1, and only about 244 of the more than 1,200 firms that had been operating under national frameworks secured full authorization, a sharp thinning of the market. The UK finalized its own cryptoasset rulebook on June 30, though the full regime doesn't take effect until October 2027. In the US, perpetual futures moved onshore in May, the SEC and CFTC issued joint guidance in mid-March classifying many digital assets as digital commodities, and the GENIUS Act, now a year past its signing, takes full effect in January 2027, with the CLARITY Act still stuck in Congress.

Rubin's central point is that having a rulebook in each jurisdiction doesn't automatically make those rulebooks compatible. "Agreeing that something belongs inside the perimeter isn't the same as building one that works across borders," she writes. A stablecoin or tokenized asset that crosses from a US platform to a European or UK counterparty runs into mismatched requirements on reserves, redemption policies, custody, and reporting, even when each jurisdiction's individual rules are clear on their own terms.

“Agreeing that something belongs inside the perimeter isn't the same as building one that works across borders.”

— Nilmini Rubin, Chief Policy Officer, Hedera

• MiCA transitional period ended July 1, 2026; only ~244 of 1,200+ firms secured full authorization
• UK finalized its cryptoasset rulebook June 30, 2026, but the full regime launches October 2027
• US: perpetual futures onshore since May 2026; SEC-CFTC joint guidance on digital commodities issued mid-March
• GENIUS Act, signed roughly a year ago, takes full effect January 2027; CLARITY Act remains stalled
• Rubin's three fixes: clearer cross-jurisdiction comparability assessments, practical supervisory coordination, and joint testing via the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox

Rubin frames fragmentation as carrying three distinct costs: compliance overhead that suppresses scaling for firms, systemic risks that stay hidden from regulators who aren't sharing information, and capital that migrates toward whichever jurisdiction offers the clearest rules with the least friction. The stakes are already visible in how MiCA reshaped the stablecoin market: USDT effectively disappeared from European exchanges once issuers without a MiCA-compliant structure lost their footing, a preview of what incompatible reserve and redemption rules can do at scale. Whether Washington ever settles its own domestic picture matters here too: a stalled CLARITY Act could push the SEC and CFTC to move faster on their own, which would add yet another moving piece to the cross-border puzzle Rubin says the industry now needs to solve without waiting for new legislation. None of her three proposed fixes requires a new treaty or a rewritten statute; comparability assessments, supervisory coordination channels, and sandbox testing are administrative tools regulators can build with the frameworks already on the books, which is precisely her point: the next phase of crypto policy is implementation work, not legislation.

None of this should be read as personalized investment advice.