Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz said the crypto industry should use the current regulatory environment to accelerate institutional adoption, arguing that widespread blockchain use would make it harder for future administrations to reverse the industry's progress.

Rooz, whose company created the Canton Network, a blockchain built for institutional finance, made the remarks at Token2049 in Singapore, one of the crypto industry's largest annual conferences, saying the industry should make blockchain so widely used that, whatever happens in 2028, “there is no going back.” The next US presidential election, which could bring a change in administration and regulatory priorities, is scheduled for Nov. 7, 2028.

He compared the opportunity to Uber and Airbnb, arguing that both services became entrenched in everyday life before policymakers could effectively restrict them. “By the time people got their act together and decided, OK, we wanna legislate against those companies, it was too late,” Rooz said. That logic underpins his call: the deeper banks, asset managers, and market infrastructure run their operations on blockchain rails, the harder a policy reversal becomes to carry out.

CLARITY Act stalls as regulators press ahead

The comments came after the CLARITY Act, a bill intended to clarify the division of digital asset oversight among US regulators, failed to advance in a Senate procedural vote in September. In the absence of broader legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees US securities markets, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates derivatives and commodities trading, have pushed ahead with crypto regulations under their existing authority. Whether the Senate revives the bill — and how far the two agencies can go on their own — will help determine the regulatory landscape institutions face heading into the 2028 election cycle.

In the same Token2049 panel, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said he hoped the CLARITY Act would still become law, arguing that legislation could prevent regulatory backtracking and encourage institutions to enter the market. He described the possibility of reversing current progress as “the biggest fear” for the industry.

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson agreed that legislation would provide greater certainty but cautioned that the industry should not rely on the CLARITY Act passing. She said the SEC and CFTC were already working to provide regulatory clarity, allowing innovation and institutional adoption to continue. Her firm has its own stake in that trajectory: Franklin Templeton has issued tokenized money-market funds on public blockchains, part of a broader move by asset managers to run fund operations on-chain.

Source: Cointelegraph