U.S. Regulators Open Door to Tokenized Securities in Bank Capital Rules - Crypto Economy

TL;DR:

• The Fed, FDIC, and OCC confirmed that tokenized stocks and bonds will receive the same capital treatment as their traditional equivalents.
• The rules make no distinction between public or private blockchains; treatment follows the asset, not the infrastructure.
• To qualify, banks must demonstrate full legal equivalence, a perfected security interest, and rigorous operational controls over smart contracts.

The three main U.S. banking regulatory agencies — the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the OCC — issued joint guidance confirming that tokenized securities will receive the same treatment under bank capital rules as their traditional counterparts. The document, published in a frequently asked questions format, eliminates one of the main barriers that had slowed institutional adoption of blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

The guiding principle is that the technology used to issue or settle an asset does not change its regulatory treatment. A Treasury bond recorded on a public blockchain, a permissioned ledger, or a traditional custodial system receives the same capital treatment. What determines the category is the underlying asset and the legal rights it confers, not the infrastructure that supports it.


Legal Equivalence as a Non-Negotiable Condition

The guidance establishes that only tokenized securities that confer legal ownership rights identical to those of their non-tokenized equivalent will qualify. A token that merely references an asset or that introduces legal ambiguity over ownership falls outside the framework. The same criterion applies for recognition as financial collateral: the bank must establish a perfected, first-priority security interest, enforceable under applicable law, along with clear evidence of asset segregation.

The treatment of derivatives on tokenized securities follows the same logic: identical to that of derivatives on the traditional form of the same asset. No new categories, no special exceptions.


Rigorous Security for Tokenized Securities

The guidance also specifies concrete operational requirements. Regulators expect rigorous governance over smart contracts, including audits of who holds administrative access to mint tokens, freeze transfers, or authorize transactions.

On custody, robust infrastructure is required — such as multi-party computation (MPC) — to prevent unauthorized access to private keys BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, which already operate tokenized Treasury products, had advocated for the need to clarify the situation, as the market had until then been operating without explicit capital guidance.