Market Structure Rules for Crypto Could End Up Governing Core of U.S. Finance: Le

The crypto industry has been desperate for U.S. regulation as the last major piece in its global maturity puzzle, but sector veteran and compliance expert TuongVy Le, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer, argues that what Congress and the regulators are working on isn't just for today's digital assets space but for the core of the future financial system.

Le, who has held top legal and regulator positions at Anchorage Digital, Bain Capital and the former Worldcoin (now World Network), told CoinDesk that she expects the new rules coming to her old regulatory employer will eventually govern the business at the heart of the markets. Migrating the securities and commodities transactions in traditional finance onto the blockchain is a dramatic move for a field that's been stuck in a legacy approach to handling transactions, rooted in lengthy clearing and settlement approaches established decades ago.

"The crypto-tradfi convergence has already started," she said in an interview, outlining ideas further amplified in a paper she published with New York University's Austin Campbell on Monday. "Once market structure and stablecoin legislation is passed, it's really going to take off. Honestly, it can be hard to realize you're undergoing a real transformation as it's happening, but I think we'll look back on this the way we looked at the internet and how it fundamentally changed how we communicate and interact as a society."I really do believe that blockchain technology and tokenization are going to remake the financial system," said Le, who is set to appear this week at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

She's so far been impressed with the changes congressional lawmakers have made in the latest discussion draft of the market-structure bill that is built on the back of the previous session's Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), calling it "much more practical, workable and streamlined." She praised its approach to getting multiple types of transactions under the reach of single trading platforms and also its views on blockchain maturity.

She said that the legislation underway in Congress right now will be a "huge unlock" for the industry, but the U.S. financial agencies, including the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are already moving.

"Even the regulators are recognizing how blockchains can be used to create better architecture for the capital markets," she said. "So the question is, how can we start to incorporate that capital technology in a way that makes markets more efficient and transparent and fair?"

She worked enforcement cases at the SEC and argues that many of those involving broker misconduct, market manipulation and fraudulent reporting could have been prevented if transactions were live and transparent, with fewer intermediaries required.

"Much of the industry has been begging for regulatory clarity for years, not just because being under the constant threat of enforcement action or even criminal charges is no way to regulate an industry, but because having a clear regime in place makes it easier to distinguish between good and bad actors," she said, noting that the having clearly understood regulations can often be as important as their content, because uncertainty carries more hazards for business than compliance hurdles.

"Sometimes the clarity is more important than what the laws actually say, because businesses will find a way to work with that," she said.

Le expects U.S. lawmakers will also build in new resources for the markets regulators as they take on the crypto oversight, but those agencies will also have to expand their expertise, because you "can't regulate what you don't understand."

"The CFTC, in particular, if it's going to be getting a lot of this new authority over crypto spot markets, is really going to need to be better resourced," she noted. "They just are not there right now."

Crypto legislation is a top priority on Capitol Hill — despite some setbacks as politics and President Donald Trump's own crypto interests have interfered with its path.

"The wind is really at the industry's back right now, and if we can get legislation right, it's really going to unleash a golden age of financial innovation," Le said.

Read More: Former SEC Chief Counsel Says Agency Needs to Make Clear Its Crypto Compliance Rules