To start, let’s consider the past year. What were some of the most impactful regulatory developments you have seen, and how have they shaped the current market landscape?
This has been an incredibly dynamic year for regulatory developments globally; However, I think something most impactful is happening in America right now. In 2025, we see both the Genius Act and the Clarity Act passed. The Genius Act brought stablecoins and major digital assets under a unified federal governance. In implementing this, the Clarity Act clarified the treatment of digital assets as securities or commodities.
Both acts reduced ambiguity for these products and triggered significant rule-making efforts at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Reserve, which will continue throughout 2025. We will see many impacts in 2026 as digital assets move deeper into the regulatory realm.
As we approach 2026, what key trends do you see in market regulation?
I think the biggest lesson for regulators over the last few years is that they need to be more proactive in the current environment. The pace of change driven by technology and social behavior is not going to slow down any time soon – if anything, they are interacting and becoming more complex. So, I think in 2026, we will see regulators taking more concrete action in some of the following areas. Focus will increase on the interaction of social media and investment. It is already well documented that investors across all jurisdictions are increasingly using social media to make investment decisions. We’ve also seen more potential issues with behavior like Telegram trading rings, finfluencers giving bad advice, and copy-trading.
As mentioned above, digital assets will receive increased attention in 2026 due to activity in the US and maturing regulations elsewhere. We are also seeing an increased regulatory focus on algorithmic trading approaches as high-frequency trading (HFT) firms expand into new markets and regulators more broadly worry about how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact markets. This leads to the last point, which is that as we see increased adoption of AI throughout the financial sector, we will naturally see regulators placing greater importance on it.
What are the most important regulatory focus areas for 2026, and which do you think will have the greatest impact on market participants?
Another more general trend we are seeing is an increased focus on cross-asset, cross-market, cross-border activity. This is a result of two things:
- First, trade barriers have been significantly reduced. Doing business across different countries has become much easier than ever before and there are many more products available to trade with than ever before. As the world has become more interconnected, business activity has also increased.
- Secondly, as we have become better at detecting financial crime within a single asset or market or country, fraudsters are increasingly trying to evade regulators by breaking down their activities across related assets, multiple markets and even borders. Most of the cases I’ve written about over the past year have involved some kind of cross-asset/market/border component. Regulators are also noticing this trend, and we will see more attention on this in 2026.
The above is also the reason why I do not believe that crypto should be treated differently from a financial crime perspective. There is no point in creating yet another silo that fraudsters can move back and forth to avoid detection.
What advice would you give to companies preparing for potential changes in market regulation in 2026, and how can they best position themselves for compliance and success?
It is quite surprising how dynamic financial regulation has become. I write a monthly newsletter, Nasdaq Regulatory Roundup, where each month I delve deeper into a new regulatory development or novel enforcement case. At first, I was worried there wouldn’t be enough, but often, I’m in a position where it’s difficult to choose which development to write about that month.
In the past, compliance teams have been designed as highly process-driven closed loops, while the current reality is that both business and market rules will constantly evolve. From a technology perspective, this means you need to pay attention to two things. First, you need flexibility to grow. I am constantly asked how we will handle 24×7 trading, HFT activity, changes in regulations and other things – even by firms that are not facing these things right now. Therefore, it is important to stay active.
Second, many companies when faced with something new focus too much on the shiny new part. Built on multiple layers of compliance resiliency, cybersecurity, model management, governance, and other processes that will outlast most change efforts. When evaluating technology, it is important to consider all of these underlying layers because issues at that layer can reduce any benefits.
