In 2025, the global crypto-policy shift has become tangible. The EU’s MiCA regime is now fully applicable, making Europe the first major economic area with a comprehensive, single rulebook for issuers, service providers, and crypto-structured products. At the same time, the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is moving from paper to practice, bringing exchanges, custodians, and ETP issuers into the automatic-exchange-of-information architecture and aligning crypto with the tax treatment of traditional securities. The direction of travel is clear: crypto is being brought inside the regulated perimeter. This supports market integrity and investor protection, but it also raises expectations around governance, transparency, disclosure, and risk management.

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The Regulatory Race in Crypto-Structured Products

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Three blocs have emerged.

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‍United States.

The Trump administration pivoted decisively in 2025. The GENIUS Act established a federal regime for payment stablecoins, while the SEC consolidated a large spot Bitcoin ETF market and approved spot Ether products.

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Crucially, it also authorized in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETPs, aligning mechanics more closely with mainstream ETF standards. Combined with evolving listing practices and CFTC work on spot contracts, the United States is now the leading jurisdiction, and it represents the deepest pool of regulated on-exchange liquidity for crypto instruments.

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‍United Kingdom and Asia.

‍The UK has reopened its cETN market to retail investors, including in tax-advantaged wrappers. In Asia, hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai have continued refining exchange, VASP, and stablecoin frameworks designed explicitly to attract institutional participation. Taken together, these centers now clearly lead the regulatory race in crypto-structured products, with the EU providing the most complete framework, and the U.S. and Switzerland the most developed product pipelines.

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Switzerland

‍has reinforced its early mover status. In October 2025, the Federal Council opened a consultation to amend the Financial Institutions Act, creating two new licence categories: payment-instrument institutions, with exclusive competence to issue tightly regulated value-stable payment tokens, and crypto-institutions, dedicated to custody, trading, staking and related services in crypto-based assets. Coupled with CARF implementation and an already mature ETP ecosystem on SIX, where crypto ETPs provide fully collateralised, exchange-traded access to the asset class, this keeps Switzerland at the forefront of regulated crypto-finance in Europe.

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For a Swiss-based crypto-asset manager and ETP issuer such as FiCAS, this evolution is constructive. It rewards firms that established institutional-grade processes early and reduces uncertainty around cross-border distribution, product innovation, and custody.

The momentum around digital assets, including tokenised real-world assets (RWAs), strengthened meaningfully in 2025 and is unlikely to fade in 2026. Regulators increasingly treat tokenisation as an innovation in issuance, settlement and collateral management, rather than as a new asset class, provided that the underlying legal claims and investor protections remain intact. Global standard-setters now project tokenised financial assets to grow from a niche today to a material share of bond, fund and collateral markets over the coming decade.

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In parallel, institutional participation in digital assets is normalising: More than half of traditional hedge funds now have some crypto exposure, large banks are opening their wealth channels to crypto ETPs, and real-money investors are cautiously exploring stablecoin-based strategies and tokenised instruments.

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This trend aligns closely with FiCAS’s core focus: professionally managed, rules-based access to diversified crypto exposure through exchange-listed products.

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These insights are part of our updated Market Outlook 2026. To read more, please download here.

For more information, please visit our website or contact our team.

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Disclaimer: This content is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute trading, legal, or investment advice. It is directed at our followers in Switzerland and may not represent the views of FiCAS. The author may hold assets mentioned in this article and assumes no obligation or responsibility for any actions taken based on the information provided.