SEC Chair Foresees US Financial Markets Transitioning On-Chain Within Two Years

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has projected a two-year timeline for US financial markets to migrate on-chain, a MOVE that could redefine the infrastructure of traditional finance. Speaking to Fox Business, Atkins positioned this shift somewhere between a prediction and a policy directive, emphasizing the SEC's 'Project Crypto' initiative aimed at enabling tokenized market infrastructure.

The real opportunity lies not in equities but in the $12.6 trillion daily repo market, alongside $67.7 trillion in public equities and $30.3 trillion in Treasuries. The transition won't be monolithic—Atkins delineates four layers of on-chain adoption, with the immediate focus on tokenized representations of securities under existing SEC regulations rather than decentralized endpoints.

Layer one involves tokenizing securities while maintaining traditional plumbing. LAYER two shifts ownership records to blockchain, though settlement remains off-chain. The gap between tokenized wrappers and full automation will dictate what's achievable in the near term versus decades ahead.