As Institutional Crypto Scales, Legacy Compliance Programs Fall Behind

By Steve Brown, Head of Business Development, StarCompliance

President Trump’s July 2025 signing of the GENIUS Act, the first federal framework for stablecoins, marked a turning point for institutional digital asset adoption. It also exposed a gap most firms have not yet closed: The compliance infrastructure built for traditional markets was not designed for what tokenization is bringing to trading desks. 

Institutional investors expect their digital asset exposure to double within three years, and BCG projects tokenized assets could reach $16 trillion by 2030. That volume is enough to make gaps in transaction surveillance a market-wide problem rather than a firm-by-firm one. 

From Experimentation to Regulatory Scrutiny 

That surveillance gap is not a technicality. Transaction surveillance, insider trading controls and personal account dealing rules must now extend to blockchain-based activity the same way they cover trades on traditional venues. FINRA has reinforced that expectation through expanded supervisory and enforcement focus on member firms’ crypto asset activities. Compliance teams can no longer treat digital assets as an external curiosity. They need to build tokenized activity into their core market abuse and conduct surveillance programs.