US Digital Finance Push Under Trump Praised at London Fintech Summit

Representatives from digital asset companies at a London fintech event have lauded the direction and momentum of US policymaking in favour of cryptocurrencies and tokenized finance, spurred by Donald Trump’s presidency.

Trump signed an executive order titled ‘Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology’ early in his second term. This initiative aimed to establish the US as the ‘crypto capital of the world’, and Trump has since taken numerous ‘pro-crypto’ steps, including hosting a ‘Digital Assets Summit’ at the White House.  

These Trump-led developments, which favor digital asset companies – a stark contrast to his anti-crypto stance during his first presidency – were frequently highlighted across various sessions of the Innovate Finance Global Summit (‘IFGS 2025’ – April 29), an annual gathering of policymakers and the private sector. Notably, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the release of draft regulations for cryptoassets in the UK on the same day.  

During a panel discussion, Tom Duff Gordon, London-based vice-president for international policy at US-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, addressed perceptions of US policy from a UK perspective. “Sometimes, looking from this side [UK] of the Atlantic, it looks as if some of the things the US are doing a bit chaotic,” he said. “I will tell you on this particular topic [digital assets], there is nothing chaotic about what the US administration is doing, right from the White House through to all the different agencies and through the chairs of the relevant committees in Congress – there’s a real determination to move forward and to do something really cutting edge with regard to cryptoassets and tokenisation.”

Lord Ed Vaizey, speaking on a later panel, was questioned about the potential knock-on effects of the US administration’s pro-crypto stance on other nations, particularly the UK. “Yes, I’m sure it will,” he responded. “We can all speculate as to why there has been a volte-face [referring to Trump’s previous stance] but I think the administration has got itself into the right place, in theory – we’ll see what happens in practice – which is that crypto needs to be regulated.”

US Expected to “Set the Tone”

The UK government has been increasingly urging regulators to prioritize economic growth and investment by streamlining regulations and reducing bureaucratic hurdles. It has committed to ‘simplify regulatory structures’ and ensure the country has a regulatory system that is ‘easier to navigate for businesses and reduces duplication’.  

“There’s always a paradox – particularly when you’re a politician – to try and persuade people that often regulation can often give a country a competitive advantage; and too often people see regulation as building a moat around the incumbents or a way of adding burdens to business,” Vaizey commented. “But particularly in financial services, good regulation is a fantastic way of attracting investment and growing businesses. Clearly, crypto needs proper regulation and, clearly, the US is the leading jurisdiction to put forward that regulation.”

“It’s interesting, given that Rachel Reeves has published draft [crypto] legislation today [April 29], how different regulators around the world work in lockstep,” said Vaizey, a former Conservative minister who previously advised cryptocurrency exchange Binance.  

“We all know that – broadly speaking – there are three, four, maybe five financial regulators – at least as far as the Western world is concerned – that matter, that are respected, places like the UK, places like Singapore, and it’s important there’s a dialogue between then,” Vaizey continued.

“But there’s no doubt at all that when the US administration decides to change its mind and take the lead in an area like this, it will make the weather,” he stated.

US “Moving Forward Vigorously”

Duff Gordon participated in a panel discussion titled ‘Blockbuster: Building the World’s Leading Tokenised Securities And Assets Market’. He welcomed the publication of the draft crypto legislation but noted that it had been over three years since the then-economic secretary to the Treasury, John Glen, spoke at IFGS’s 2022 edition about the UK’s ambition to be a global crypto ‘hub’ (April 4, 2022 – the Conservative government, of which Glen was a member, was defeated by Labour in the UK’s July 2024 general election).  

“A lot of thinking has been done between 2022 and 2025 but if we’re all totally honest, we [UK] haven’t really motored ahead,” Duff Gordon admitted. “Today… we have the legislation, and after that, we’ll get the regulation from the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] and the Bank of England. So, I think it’s an exciting moment. We’re finally moving forward, and we have to, because the US is really motoring ahead.”

He then outlined a more technical wish-list, emphasizing the importance of both the crypto legislation and the upcoming publication of the Financial Services Growth & Competitiveness Strategy (announced by Reeves earlier at the event for July 15th).

“We will advocate really strongly for stablecoins to have a wholesale role in the settlement of tokenised assets,” he stated. “We need to have both the cash and also the assets on chain [blockchain] in order to derive all the efficiencies of this new technology. That’s really important.”

Secondly, he advocated for “a role for public permissionless blockchains, rather than putting all of these kind of tokenised assets on these small closed loops, which we think represents a security risk, not great for resilience, not great for innovation, not great for liquidity, etc.”

Thirdly, he mentioned post-trade market infrastructure. “Let’s see what we need to retain from the legacy or existing system,” he said, noting that the challenge and opportunity was to “maximise efficiency”.

UK Progress Described as “Somewhat Fragmented”

Matthew Osborne, Europe policy director at Ripple, another US-headquartered digital asset infrastructure company, was also on the panel. He highlighted a joint report by Ripple and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), published on April 7, 2025, which projected the global market for tokenized real-world assets to grow from $0.6 trillion today to $18.9 trillion by 2033. “So, a massive global market, and the UK is really well placed to be a hub for digital assets, trading, infrastructure and settlement,” he said, before emphasizing recent key developments and priorities.

He began by referencing the UK’s relatively new Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) as “a really well-designed framework.” He contrasted it with a similar initiative in the European Union (EU), the ‘DLT Pilot Regime’, which commenced in March 2023. “When I go to Europe and talk to policymakers there, they are envious, in private, of the UK sandbox, because the EU DLT pilot hasn’t quite been so successful,” he noted. He also highlighted the UK government’s planned ‘digital gilt instrument’ (referred to as ‘DIGIT’ and issued using DLT) and the Property (Digital Assets Etc.) Bill, which legally establishes digital assets as property (“a really critical piece of clarification”).

“But there’s more to do,” Osborne continued, describing “progress so far” as having been “a bit piecemeal” and pointing to “more key things that need to happen.” He referenced another report (‘The digitalisation of UK capital markets: digitalised financial market infrastructure and tokenised bonds’, published by TheCityUK and Hogan Lovells in January 2025), stating his agreement with “a lot” of its recommendations. He then emphasized three priorities: the dematerialization (digitization) of assets, the use of digital assets as collateral, and the need for an on-chain settlement asset, which he believes needs to be stablecoins.  

“We Need Active Participation”

Kate Lowe, head of product strategy at financial market infrastructure provider Euroclear UK & International, emphasized the company’s involvement in the DSS.  

“We obviously welcome the chancellor talking about becoming a digital assets hub, but we’re putting that to work by participation,” Lowe stated. “If we just sit on the sidelines and talk about things, potentially we’re not going to move forward, and that’s why we at Euroclear have entered the sandbox,” she said, also highlighting Euroclear’s interest in DIGIT.

Last year, US Securities & Exchange commissioner Hester Peirce proposed a cross-border digital securities sandbox between the US and UK (May 29, 2024). Reeves mentioned in her speech that she and US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had discussed how officials from both countries could “explore opportunities to support industry to innovate cross-border, in line with” Peirce’s proposal, “potentially allowing greater digital collaboration between capital markets in New York and London.”  

“It’s very, very exciting times for the UK but we need people to participate in these initiatives so that we can really prove out and test the sandbox and come up with frameworks and come up with a model that works for the UK before we look at transatlantic models,” Lowe urged.

“Markets Operate 24/7”

The panel’s fourth speaker, Niki Beattie, began by noting that ClearToken, a digital assets clearing business she represented, had also joined the DSS.

She welcomed the crypto legislation, stating it would introduce “trust in the system,” which is crucial for the UK to achieve its ‘digital assets hub’ ambitions.

“But we can talk about digital assets until we’re blue in the face […] but we need liquidity,” she emphasized. “I think it’s time we all woke up and realised that we’re going to a 24/7 market, and that’s where we have to be to be competitive.”

She pointed out that in the US, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is considering introducing 24/5 clearing hours for the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC). “We’re still talking about ‘T+1’ [securities transactions settled within one business day], and can we get it in? It’s like we need to wake up. Crypto assets have taught us that markets are 24/7. People want to be able to interact whenever they can. So, that liquidity is really important.”

“The final point around that is [that] actually we shouldn’t make the mistake [that] things have to be issued on DLT in order to be tokenised,” she continued. “I’m a bit worried that the government, with DIGIT, is going in that direction. Because actually you can take an asset, like a gilt, that is already currently issued in Euroclear CREST [central securities depository and settlement system], and you can tokenise that in a clearing and settlement platform today and get on and make it completely liquid and fungible with any digital assets. So, we need to be careful that we don’t trap assets somewhere that are issued on a platform that we can’t get any liquidity.”

Urgency to Avoid Falling Behind

Beattie expressed optimism about both the DSS and the concept of a transatlantic digital sandbox.

“The sandbox [DSS] is really welcome, I think it’s been really well run […] although we haven’t actually got anything live here [yet] in the sandbox, so we need to see how that goes. I mean, one of the worries about sandboxes is you never get a business that’s viable enough to get out of that. Hopefully the UK sandbox is going to work effectively around that,” she said.

Osborne reiterated his focus on the EU DLT Pilot Regime. “There is a recognition among EU policymakers that the DLT Pilot Regime has been designed in a way that hasn’t encouraged a great deal of participation by the market,” he stated. “But there has been a lot of work done by EU policymakers to identify exactly what the barriers are, what are the problems with that. We’re now seeing a lot of ambition.”

“I think that, actually, from both the US and the EU, we’re now seeing a lot of pressure, a lot of ambition to take forward this technology. I think the UK needs to move fast if it’s not going to fall behind in this area,” he added.

The UK has been slower than the EU – which it left in January 2020 – in regulating crypto. The EU’s comprehensive Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation came fully into effect in December 2024.

“I think it’s really important to recognise, with today’s announcement from the chancellor, that we’re not going to have a ‘MiCA’ here [in the UK] – everything is going to come under the same legislation that all financial instruments come under,” Beattie explained. “I think one of the issues with the sandbox [EU DLT Pilot Regime] in Europe [is]: is this alternative regulation, where do I fit? Am I going to have to run with two different regimes? I think Europe’s actually got quite a few things to sort out in relation to MiCA compared to what we’ve got here.”

The Future of Tokenization

The session concluded with panelists summarizing their perspectives on recent developments and predicting the landscape of tokenized finance in 2030.

“There has been some great progress,” Osborne acknowledged. “There is a recognition of the benefits of the tech. However, there’s not a great deal of understanding. It’s a really complicated topic. Not many people actually ‘get’ this. Not many people understand how tokenisation works, or how it’s beneficial to, say, a firm that’s outside the digital assets sector.”

“I think we do need to do a lot more to explain this technology to policymakers,” he continued, suggesting that government and regulators should collaborate to “identify the barriers to adoption of this technology” and work to remove them. He anticipated digital assets “playing a critical role” in the Financial Services Growth & Competitiveness Strategy, adding that “we’re [UK] going to see digital gilts within five years… and we’re going to see use of those for collateral.”

Beattie predicted “huge leaps forward,” including – “hopefully” – 24/7 liquidity. “I think that’s going to be revolutionary,” she stated. “First of all, it’s about unlocking institutional ability to be able to play in the DeFi [Decentralised Finance] markets. But actually, long term, it’s really democratising finance, and it’s allowing any individual to basically have an asset that they can use to go and buy a coffee or whatever. You could stay invested in an asset for as long as you want, or you could use your car to get a loan very quickly. All of those things are coming. But we actually have to unlock the institutional market first.”

“I feel and hope that we will start to see that tokenisation will start creeping into legacy [infrastructure], and my hope is it creeps in in a meaningful way,” Lowe concluded. “I think the way we can do it is by looking at the use cases that are going to add the most amount of value. And for me, again, it’s looking at areas where, historically, we’ve had locked assets and we potentially can’t use them for collateral. The technology now gives us the ability to unlock those assets and move them around and use them as collateral.”

“Sometimes we talk too much about intermediaries and not about the uses of this,” Duff Gordon observed. “I think this is really important for financial inclusion, democratising access to financial instruments that people hitherto haven’t been able to get access to. I think that’s super important. And then just reducing the cost and inefficiency with regard to capital-raising for SMEs [small- and medium-sized businesses]. Those are our clients – that’s what we’re doing this for, and for the UK to remain competitive.”

The panel was moderated by Nick Murray-Leslie of London-based PR firm Chatsworth. Vaizey spoke on a subsequent panel titled ‘Digital Assets on the World Stage.’