CoinDesk
Nasdaq President Tal Cohen told the Consensus Miami audience on Wednesday that a more constructive Securities and Exchange Commission has turned crypto's regulatory "gray zone" from a "no-fly zone" into a place where market operators can experiment, scale and ship product without expecting a regulatory brushback. The shift, in Cohen's framing, is what is letting Nasdaq and its peers invest seriously in blockchain infrastructure, tokenized assets and artificial-intelligence tooling rather than hedge around an uncertain rulebook.
Cohen said Nasdaq is pursuing two converging trends at once: "always on" market infrastructure that runs closer to round-the-clock, and tighter integration between legacy financial rails and digital-asset systems. The exchange, which provides trading technology to more than 130 markets globally, is testing AI-driven simulations of its own matching engine to model stress scenarios and support longer trading hours.
Why it matters
Cohen's read matters less for the soundbite than for the sequencing it implies: a regulator Nasdaq trusts is the precondition for the operator to commit engineering and balance-sheet capital to tokenization and 24/7 rails, not a downstream consequence. That reorders the build order for the entire institutional stack — custody, settlement, surveillance and market-data layers all become investable once the venue itself is willing to anchor on them.
The AI angle is the second-order signal. Stress-testing a digital twin of a live matching engine is the kind of infrastructure spend that only becomes a priority when an exchange is preparing for materially longer trading windows and higher message rates; Cohen's framing puts that work firmly on Nasdaq's near-term roadmap rather than in research.
Market impact
For tokenization, Cohen's "asset in motion" framing — easier to move, finance and trade, with cleaner shareholder insight for issuers — lines up directly with what BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and the major DTCC-adjacent players have been pitching for two years. A venue-level endorsement from Nasdaq compresses the credibility gap between TradFi pilot projects and production deployment.
Frequently asked questions
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What did Nasdaq's Tal Cohen say about the SEC at Consensus Miami?
Cohen said the SEC has shifted from a hands-off "no-fly zone" for crypto to a proactive, constructive stance that lets market operators experiment with tokenization and digital infrastructure without expecting a regulatory brushback.
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What blockchain and AI projects is Nasdaq pursuing?
Cohen said Nasdaq is investing in "always on" market infrastructure, tokenized assets and blockchain rails, and is testing AI-driven simulations of its own matching engine to model stress scenarios and support longer trading hours.
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Why is the SEC's stance the unlock for tokenization?
In Cohen's framing, regulatory clarity is the precondition that lets venues commit engineering and capital to tokenization and 24/7 rails — reordering the build order for custody, settlement, surveillance and market-data layers across the institutional stack.
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What is Nasdaq's role in global market infrastructure?
Nasdaq provides trading technology to more than 130 markets globally, giving any infrastructure decisions it makes on tokenization and AI tooling an outsized reach across both traditional and digital-asset venues.
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What problem did Cohen flag as still unsolved?
Cohen said interoperability between legacy financial rails and tokenized-asset systems remains the largest hurdle — firms do not want to operate separate infrastructures for traditional securities and digital assets, and no exchange has solved that bridge yet.
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