European regulators at MERGE Madrid 2026 said oversight of digital assets under MiCA should shift from authorizing firms to supervising them. EBA official Desislava Petrova called for better information-sharing as firms expand across borders. National regulators also sought consistent reporting and faster responses to unauthorized operators, while noting that legal differences still complicate cross-border trading and settlement of tokenized securities.
Kraken’s Victor Sáez said its xStocks tokenized equities had surpassed $1 billion in assets under management and that more than 60% of trading volume occurred outside conventional market hours. He cautioned that tokenizing an asset does not create demand for it. Speakers also discussed limited connectivity between blockchain networks as a challenge for secondary-market trading.
