🧭 Two U.S. decisions that will matter more than the Fed cut

As markets fixated on interest-rate cuts, Washington took two actions this week that could have a big impact in the long run.

Neither came with fanfare. Each transforms the rails of American finance.

Together, they signal a future in which the blockchain is as fundamental to Wall Street as it already  s to Silicon Valley and, perhaps, paper money itself. It’s how the next market structure is being constructed, brick by brick, through policy rather than hype.

Wall Street’s settlement machines go on-chain

The SEC approved a three-year pilot permitting DTCC: which clears virtually all US stock trades, to record real securities directly on blockchains.

For the first time, the heart of America’s financial infrastructure will have real, elegant access into tokenized and registrable records.

Under the no-action letter:

• DTCC can create and extinguish blockchain-based tokens linked to securities in its custody already

• Participants also have the option to convert book-entry holdings into tokenized entitlements

• Transfers can take place outside of market hours

• These assets can only be transferred by wallets that are registered with DTCC

• DTCC maintains a “root wallet,” for reversing mistakes or fraud.

• Pilot covers Treasuries, large ETFs and Russell 1000 equities

It’s not DeFi, and it doesn’t want to be. It’s a permissioned, regulated, high-assurance environment where the objective is straightforward: demonstrate that blockchain could make settlement faster, cleaner and more resilient.

This is the infrastructure layer shifting, not speculation, not token launches. Plumbing.

If it works, Wall Street won’t be “adopting crypto.”
It will simply run on-chain rails because they’re better.

Congress wants to open 401(k)s to Bitcoin

Hours later, Congress pushed the SEC to take a further structural step: let Bitcoin and other digital assets into 401(k) retirement plans. It comes after Trump’s August executive order calling for agencies to find ways to “democratize access” to alternative assets for retirement savers.

Lawmakers said in a formal letter they wrote to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins that:

• Current regulations exclude millions of Americans from new asset classes

• Crypto should sit alongside real estate and private equity

• Accredited-investor definition to cover more than wealth; also recognize licenses, job experience or competency exams

• The SEC and Department of Labor must create a coordinated framework for crypto in retirement menu

It’s a policy change: not a loophole or workaround and that too, a structural one.

ETFs opened the institutional channel. 401(k)s could open the household channel.

And combined with the recent statement by Atkins that most crypto assets are not securities, the regulatory path is also far clearer than it was even six months ago.

The Signal: Tokenized markets and tokenized savings

You can think of these two moves as unrelated headlines.
But the real story sits between them:

The US is gearing up for a financial system in which assets, from stocks to Treasuries could live natively in tokenized form. The DTCC pilot rewires the asset side and the 401(k) push re-wires the demand side.

One modernizes the architecture and the other makes the investor base more modern. Neither is loud. Both are foundational.

This is how structural changes always occur: quietly, inside regulatory memos or letters that don’t go viral but which can reshape trillion-dollar flows.

Crypto markets have not priced this. But the policy has clearly turned.

Coinbase is getting ready to launch prediction markets and their own tokenised US stocks on December 17, one of the company’s most substantial product expansions yet.

This year prediction markets have been popping up all over the U.S. (dealing in sports, elections and economic activities.) Gemini just got approval. Robinhood and Crypto.com are already active.

Now the largest U.S. exchange, Coinbase, is joining in.

Tokenized stocks are also seeing a lot of action, with monthly volume up 32% to reach $1.45B. Coinbase getting into the game means that tokenized equities will soon be going mainstream.

The shift is neatly aligned with Coinbase’s broader march toward being an “everything app” for markets: Put your crypto trades next to stocks, derivatives and even contract events in the same interface.

The bottom line is that Coinbase is placing itself at the heart of the next wave of on-chain financial products, at a time when regulators are cozying up to them.

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