Abstract
In early 2026, a piece of news regarding the selection of the Federal Reserve Chairman could trigger fluctuations in the crypto market, indicating that crypto assets have become highly embedded in the macro policy environment. Policy factors are shifting from background variables to core factors influencing market structure.
Over the past decade, crypto regulation has experienced three stages: the early stage of ambiguity and post-factum enforcement, followed by a period where direction gradually became clearer, but rules had not yet taken effect, until a true implementation phase began in 2025. Regulation is no longer merely chasing risks but is proactively intervening in market structure design, clarifying who can participate, how assets should be custodied, and who bears the responsibilities for clearing.
Policy is no longer simply associated with favorable or unfavorable outcomes. It resembles a financial order engineering project, reshaping market structures through institutional arrangements. Stablecoins are included in the regulatory logic of balance sheets, becoming increasingly akin to constrained payment and funding intermediaries; exchanges and service providers are incorporated into a licensing and capital requirements system; the leverage and clearing structures of DeFi are starting to be included within the purview of systemic risk; Asia is adopting a permissioned open approach while Europe and the United States are clarifying boundaries through legislation and enforcement. The global regulatory logic is converging: risks must be visible, responsibilities must be traceable, and failures must be clearable.
Entering 2026, the focus of policies has shifted further upward. It is moving from investor protection and price volatility to systemic issues such as liquidity structures, clearing mechanisms, and cross-border capital transmission. Does stablecoin affect the currency market? Could on-chain leverage overflow into traditional finance? Will cross-border payments and PayFi alter the foreign exchange and payment regulatory framework? These questions are becoming new policy focal points.
In such an institutional environment, the competitive logic of the crypto market is changing. Structures characterized by high leverage, ambiguous responsibilities, and opaque reserves will become increasingly unsustainable; designs that have clear reserves, risk isolation, and clear clearing paths are more likely to find long-term space. Innovation will not disappear, but it will shift from disorderly expansion to manageable growth.
Understanding policy evolution is not just a macro judgment, but a necessary prerequisite for understanding the future market structure. The form of crypto is being institutionalized. Those who can find a balance between transparency and efficiency are more likely to navigate through the next cycle.
Table of Contents
Abstract
1. Policy is not favorable or unfavorable, but a "financial order engineering"
1.1 Research background: 2025-2026 is a true watershed in crypto policy
1.2 Why treating regulation as a "price variable" is gradually becoming ineffective in 2025
1.3 Crypto policy is transitioning from "expression of attitude" to "institutional execution"
2. Timeline: Policy evolution from "ambiguity period" to "implementation period"
2.1 2018-2022: Regulation ambiguity period, crypto market's "barbaric growth phase"
2.2 2023-2024: Policy norming period, direction clear but rules not yet implemented
2.3 2025: The year rules begin to be truly executed
3. Key changes in 2025: Not a bill, but a change in regulatory logic
3.1 United States: From "enforcement regulation" to "institutional redistribution"
3.2 European Union MiCA: The real landing effect of 2025
3.3 Asian path: Permissioned opening, not loose regulation
3.4 Summary: Regulatory logic consensus in 2025
4. Forward-looking policy focal points for 2026: Shifting from price risk to systemic risk
4.1 The focus of stablecoin regulation may shift towards the macro-financial framework
4.2 On-chain leverage and clearing risk: Does DeFi possess systemic safety?
4.3 PayFi and cross-border payments: Regulatory focus on on-chain payment pathways
4.4 Keywords for 2026: Non-price risk, systemic importance, cross-market transmission
5. How policies reshape the structure of the crypto market
5.1 Changes in product forms: From high-leverage games to risk isolation designs
5.2 Changes in funding pathways: From anonymous liquidity to identifiable liquidity
5.3 Changes in risk structures: Who bears tail risks
6. Outlook and trends: From "compliance adaptation" to "structural selection"
6.1 Compliance is no longer a cost item, but a market access right
6.2 The market will move towards a "dual-track system": compliant financial layer vs. on-chain innovation layer
6.3 Stablecoins will become the core entry point of the "new financial infrastructure"
6.4 Regulation will shift from "rule-making" to "data-driven"
6.5 Structural evolution: From "open competition" to "structural concentration"
6.6 The compliance path of DeFi: From "protocol neutrality" to "interface compliance"
6.7 Track repricing: From "traffic competition" to "structural competition"
7. Conclusion: A new stage of the crypto market under institutional environment
References
1. Policy is not favorable or unfavorable, but a "financial order engineering"
In early February 2026, a rapid decline in the crypto market was triggered by a macro policy signal: Trump nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve on X. After the announcement, the market quickly re-priced future monetary policy expectations, the dollar strengthened, risk assets faced overall pressure, and the crypto market experienced a noticeable chain reaction.
This event shows us that the Web3 market has entered a phase of high sensitivity to policy and the ability to provide immediate feedback. Unlike the past, which was mainly driven by its cycles and narratives, just a yet-to-be-determined policy signal in early 2026 was enough to quickly transmit to crypto asset prices through risk preferences, leverage adjustments, and capital flows.
The changes in policy from 2025 to 2026 are no longer just background conditions for the market, but are becoming key variables impacting market structure. Studying the historical logic and future direction of policies is no longer a supplement to macro judgments, but a necessary prerequisite for understanding how the crypto market operates and its long-term evolution.
1.1 Research background: 2025-2026 is a true watershed in crypto policy
Looking back at the evolution of crypto policy over the past decade, a noticeable discontinuity can be found: the regulation from 2018 to 2022 was more about chasing the market. The main task of regulatory agencies was to remedy and enforce after risks had already emerged. The issues of ICO bubbles, exchange explosions, stablecoin de-peggings, and algorithmic model collapses presented a clear post-factum response characteristic.
However, 2025 is viewed as a policy turning point, not because a heavyweight bill was passed, nor because the regulatory attitude suddenly shifted to friendly or strict, but because regulation began to shift from post-response to pre-design. The focus of policy discussion underwent a fundamental change: no longer just concerned with which behaviors are illegal, but proactively intervening in the market structure itself, redefining which businesses can exist, in what structures they should exist, and who should bear responsibilities for clearing, support, and risk isolation.
During this stage, multiple jurisdictions gradually formed a consensus: the crypto market is no longer a marginal experiment that can long remain outside existing financial orders but must be managed as a structural market within that framework.
As we enter 2026, this change further becomes explicit. The focus of discussions is no longer about whether to regulate but how to regulate, to what extent, and who will be responsible. Regulation is beginning to manifest as specific, executable institutional arrangements, including entry standards, compliance boundaries, risk isolation mechanisms, and cross-market coordination rules.
In this sense, 2025-2026 constitutes the true watershed for crypto policy: regulation no longer limits the market but begins to reshape the operational structure of the market itself.
1.2 Why treating regulation as a "price variable" is gradually becoming ineffective in 2025
For a long time, the market habitually understood the impact of policies in a highly simplified manner: passing a bill meant good news, postponing approval meant bad news; tightening regulation indicated bearishness, while friendly policy expressions indicated bullishness. This logic was not completely ineffective in the early stages, as the main impact of policies was indeed concentrated in expectations and sentiment.
However, as the logic of regulation changes, this understanding clearly began to falter starting in 2025. The core of policy concern is no longer about price itself but about the structural risks behind the price. From a regulatory perspective, what truly concerns regulators is not the rise and fall of a certain token, but whether risks will spill over into the traditional financial system, how leverage is created and transmitted, and in extreme cases who should bear the responsibility for clearing and liability.
The manner in which policies affect the market is undergoing a transformation: no longer directly affecting sentiment to influence prices, but shaping market structures through institutional design in the long term. Regulators will not tell the market which direction to head, but will clarify which businesses can obtain compliant liquidity, which models will undergo systematic compression, and which participants have long-term survival space.
Under this framework, the judgment of "passing a bill means good news" is overly simplistic. Some policies may suppress activity in the short term, but in the medium to long term enhance the safety and certainty of capital entry; conversely, some seemingly loose expressions, if lacking in execution mechanisms, often fail to truly change market operating modes.
Therefore, since 2025, policies are no longer simple price variables but become critical factors determining the direction of market structural evolution.
1.3 Crypto policy is transitioning from "expression of attitude" to "institutional execution"
If one sentence can summarize the policy changes from 2025 to 2026, it would be: crypto regulation is moving from uncertainty to structural constraints. The uncertainty of the early market mainly came from concerns about "will it apply uniformly"; in 2025 to 2026, this uncertainty is being replaced by a clearer but more binding rule system. Regulation does not promise market growth but clarifies which behaviors are no longer tolerated, and which paths possess long-term compliance.
Meanwhile, the regulatory focus has shifted from expressing attitudes to executing institutions. Policies are gradually being translated into operable rules, including licensing systems, information disclosure requirements, and definitions of clearing and custody responsibilities. Compliance is no longer just a label at the narrative level, but begins to translate into actual operating costs and competitive thresholds.
In this process, the way policies influence the market is also changing: it no longer primarily manifests as short-term volatility but persists in shaping the structure of funding, product forms, and participating entities through institutional arrangements. This change often occurs at a slow pace but possesses high irreversibility.
Based on this judgment, the subsequent sections of this article will no longer revolve around single policies as "favorable or unfavorable," but will attempt to answer a more core question: under the new policy framework, what kind of structure will the crypto market be reshaped into, and which participants will benefit or be eliminated in this process?
2. Timeline: Policy evolution from "ambiguity period" to "implementation period"
When we extend our timeline for observation, we will find that crypto policy evolution is not a random response, but follows a clear path, moving from ambiguity to executability, from attitude expression to institutional arrangements.
2.1 2018 - 2022: Regulatory ambiguity period, the "barbaric growth phase" of the crypto market
From 2018 to 2022, it was a typical regulatory ambiguity period for the crypto market. The core characteristic of this stage is that regulation had not yet formed a unified logic that could be anticipated, understood, and internalized by the market.
From a policy perspective, most rules at that time still relied on qualitative judgments: whether digital assets belong to securities, commodities, or payment instruments varied across different institutions and jurisdictions. Enforcement exhibited clear fragmentation, often only intervening after risks had become manifest rather than setting clear boundaries in advance.
The crypto market gradually formed a self-reinforcing structure. From 2018 to 2022, the core innovations in the market revolved around efficiency and expansion: DeFi lending and decentralized exchanges rapidly developed, algorithmic stablecoins, cross-protocol yield stacking, permissionless derivatives, and high-leverage products continuously emerged. Projects and platforms generally prioritized growth speed over compliance design.
In this process, leverage was continuously amplified, yet it lacked clear clearing and responsibility boundaries. Stablecoins, in the absence of transparent reserves and audit constraints, effectively played the role of settlement and liquidity hub within the system; while the yield structure formed through liquidity mining and cross-protocol assemblies retained substantial risks within the system without corresponding isolation or backing mechanisms. Many models considered innovative at that time essentially radically reorganized traditional financial logic within a regulatory vacuum that had yet to intervene in structural design.
This stage exhibited a typical "innovation first, rules lag" reality. When entry thresholds, responsibility attribution, and risk boundaries remain unclear, the market naturally evolves along the path of lowest cost and fastest expansion, laying structural groundwork for subsequent regulatory intervention. The period from 2018 to 2022 does not signify regulatory failure, but rather that regulation had not yet genuinely entered the structural design phase.
2.2 2023 - 2024: Policy norming period, direction clear but not yet executed
From 2023 to 2024, crypto policy entered a norming period. Regulatory directions began to gradually converge across major jurisdictions; however, an executable and stable institutional framework had not yet been fully established. Regulation began to clarify "which behaviors are unacceptable" but still failed to provide a complete set of long-term operational rules.
United States: Clear enforcement, lagging legislation
In the United States, this phase's characteristics are particularly evident. Regulatory agencies continuously sent signals to the market through high-frequency enforcement actions, negating certain business models and redrawing compliance boundaries. However, a unified and clear federal legislation remained absent, meaning while the market could sense regulatory attitudes, it found it hard to accurately assess long-term compliance paths.
Multiple prominent cases reinforced this signal. In 2023, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and conspiracy, clearly conveying the regulatory stance that core responsible parties must bear legal consequences. Celsius Network, a crypto lending platform that declared bankruptcy in 2022, saw its founder Alex Mashinsky prosecuted in 2023 and later sentenced in 2025, reinforcing expectations of accountability for high-yield promises and misuse of client funds. Concurrently, the developers of the privacy mixing protocol Tornado Cash faced criminal charges in 2023, sparking widespread discussions within the industry about the responsibility boundaries of decentralized tools.
Despite attempts at various legislative proposals in Congress, by 2024, a unified, enforceable regulatory system had still not materialized. This situation led the market to continuously probe red lines, forming a dynamic where direction is determined, but rules have not yet landed.
Europe and Asia: Clearer paths
In contrast, the EU achieved a more systematic institutional design during this stage. The introduction of MiCA for the first time established a complete framework defining the issuance, service, and market boundaries of crypto assets, making it clear that they would be incorporated into the existing financial regulatory system. Some financial centers in Asia opted for a more strategic approach. By leveraging licensing systems and clear compliance frameworks, they permitted certain activities to operate within the regulatory view under clearly defined risk boundaries. Hong Kong began issuing licenses to virtual asset trading platforms, with HashKey Group and OSL being among the first local exchanges to receive approval. Singapore raised entry thresholds through a tiered licensing system. This "permissioned openness" provided the market with a more predictable development path and created real examples for institutional participation and compliance innovation.
The norming in this phase does not equate to rules being implemented. It functions more as a collective signal sent by regulators to the market: the crypto market will no longer operate in a gray area for long, and the core of future competition will no longer just be technology and traffic but regulatory capability and structural design.
2.3 2025: The year rules began to be truly executed
If the previous phase addressed "where to go," then starting from 2025, regulation began systematically addressing "how to proceed."
The changes of this year did not stem from a shocking piece of legislation, but manifested in the concrete execution of rules. The focus of regulatory concern fell on three fundamental questions long avoided: who is qualified to issue and provide services, where funds should be custodied, and once a problem arises, who bears the responsibilities.
In the EU, MiCA effectively entered substantive execution in 2025, with stablecoin issuers and crypto service providers beginning to accept ongoing regulation under a unified framework. In Asia, issuance qualifications, custody arrangements, and responsibility delineations were further specified, with stablecoins progressively transitioning from "market consensus tools" to regulated payment and settlement components. In the US, even though the legislation was still not fully formed, regulatory requirements surrounding spot Bitcoin ETFs’ custody, clearing, and disclosure factually established a compliance paradigm for capital entering the crypto market.
Regulation began to reshape market operating structures through basic rule execution. Compliance transitioned from being an attitude issue to a question of sustainable operation. Certain models were not directly banned but naturally lost feasibility under constraints of responsibility and cost.
2025 represented a critical turning point for the crypto market, moving from a "scalable structure" to a "manageable structure." Rules began to be genuinely implemented, and the market was first compelled to face a reality: in a system where responsibilities must be assumed, who can remain.
3. Key changes in 2025: Not a bill, but a change in regulatory logic
The changes in 2025 do not necessarily mark the passing of any specific bill, but are more evident in the fundamental shifts in regulatory narrative, power structures, and institutional design thinking.
3.1 United States: From "enforcement regulation" to "institutional redistribution"
In recent years, the US’s approach to governing the crypto industry has heavily relied on enforcement. The SEC has used "law through case" methods to bring a large number of projects under the umbrella of securities regulation; the CFTC has limitedly intervened in derivatives and futures markets. On the surface, this appears as tougher regulation, but in reality, it is a stopgap measure in the absence of institutional frameworks. By 2025, problems could no longer simply be resolved through enforcement: on one hand, the boundaries of enforcement have become increasingly blurred, and judicial system pressures have risen; on the other hand, institutions, banks, and payment systems have begun to substantively enter the crypto field, and the original handling models could not support scaled financial activities. US regulation began shifting from "who violates, penalizes who" to a more fundamental question: who has the authority to regulate what? What is the basis for regulation? Where should different financial attributes of crypto assets be placed in which institutional containers?
3.1.1 The true significance of the CLARITY Act: it is not about whether it passes, but the boundary logic
The CLARITY Act, formally known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, is a legislative attempt to systematically reconstruct the structure of the digital asset market amid long-standing regulatory uncertainty. This act was introduced in the House on May 29, 2025, and was passed with significant bipartisan support in July of the same year, becoming the first complete piece of legislation concerning crypto market structure to pass a single chamber of Congress. As of April 2026, the CLARITY Act has not yet passed the Senate and is in a phase of ongoing stasis and repeated negotiation: on one hand, the Senate has yet to establish a new deliberation timetable, with legislative processes repeatedly delayed; on the other hand, significant divisions still exist regarding key issues like stablecoin revenue, the scope of DeFi regulation, and conflicts of interest between the banking and crypto industries, making it difficult for the bill to advance towards final voting. Nevertheless, the act is still viewed as the core framework blueprint for US digital asset regulation and continues to receive attention at the policy level (including calls from Treasury officials for legislative action). However, with midterm elections approaching in 2026, there remains considerable uncertainty regarding its final fate within the current congressional cycle.
In terms of content, the CLARITY Act is not a special bill targeting a single issue, but a "market structure bill" whose core lies not in encouraging or restricting certain types of crypto activities, but in answering a more fundamental question: how should the digital asset market be incorporated into the existing financial regulatory system? In response to this goal, the core contents of the CLARITY Act can be summarized in four aspects.
First, it clarifies the legal classification framework for digital assets. For the first time, CLARITY distinguishes between different types of digital assets at the legislative level, focusing on introducing the concepts of "investment-type digital assets" and "mature digital commodities." Some tokens may be classified as securities during the early financing and centralized control phase; however, once the network operates independently of a single entity, and tokens are predominantly used for network functions or transactional settlements, their legal attributes can change. Additionally, CLARITY introduces a "dynamic regulatory attribution" mechanism. In contrast to previous enforcement logic which permanently defined once recognized, CLARITY allows digital assets to transition from the SEC’s securities regulatory framework to the commodity or digital commodity system overseen by the CFTC upon meeting specific conditions. This design effectively acknowledges that the decentralization process itself bears legal significance.
Third, it clarifies the boundaries of authority between the SEC and CFTC. CLARITY delineates regulatory responsibilities explicitly: the SEC is mainly responsible for securities-type digital assets pertaining to financing, issuance, and expected investment returns; the CFTC is tasked with overseeing decentralized digital goods and their derivatives markets. This arrangement aims to end the long-standing uncertain state resulting from jurisdictional disputes through enforcement. Finally, it layers compliance responsibilities for market participants. The act does not simply place all liabilities onto project parties, but instead sets differentiated obligations for project parties, trading platforms, brokers, custodians, and other roles, including information disclosure, registration requirements, user asset segregation, and risk management responsibilities.
On this institutional design basis, the analytical significance of the CLARITY Act can unfold. From 2021 to 2024, the US failed to形成一个系统化的 crypto 资产立法框架，监管主要依赖 SEC 通过执法行动来界定规则边界.这一转变最终带来了深刻的结构性变化：监管不能只依赖例行检查，还应该通过清晰的规则和责任界定，确保在不确定的环境下，市场参与者依然能够获得长期发展空间。
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