Nasdaq President: SEC's New Crypto Stance Has Markets Building Again!

Nasdaq President Tal Cohen declared at Consensus Miami that the SEC's shift from enforcement-first to proactive collaboration has reopened the door for market operators to experiment with blockchain infrastructure and tokenized assets. "The gray zone four years ago was a no-fly zone," Cohen said. "The gray zone now is we can build. We can gain some scale. We can experiment without maybe any brush back."

Cohen outlined Nasdaq's two-pronged strategic bet: "always on" market infrastructure that operates nearly around the clock, and full convergence between traditional financial rails and digital asset systems. The exchange — which supplies trading technology to more than 130 markets globally — is actively investing in tokenization, blockchain infrastructure, and AI to drive that transition.

Interoperability between legacy and digital platforms remains the central technical hurdle, Cohen…