Summer Mersinger to Testify Before House Financial Services Committee on Why Tokenization Matters for the Future of U.S. Capital Markets

Washington, D.C. (March 23, 2026) – On Wednesday, Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger will testify before the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing entitled “Tokenization and the Future of Securities: Modernizing Our Capital Markets.”

In her testimony, Mersinger will argue that tokenization represents the next chapter of capital market infrastructure and that the United States should adopt a clear, future-focused regulatory approach that allows this technology to develop responsibly here at home.

Tokenization is the process of representing traditional financial assets on blockchain networks so ownership, transfer, and related market functions can operate on more modern, programmable rails. Tokenized securities are still securities. But the infrastructure beneath them can look very different from the siloed, batch-based systems markets have relied on for decades.

Just as the transition to electronic trading in the 1990s made financial markets faster and more efficient, tokenization represents the next phase in the modernization of capital market infrastructure. The United States has historically led these technological transitions, and how policymakers respond to tokenization will help determine whether the U.S. maintains that leadership.

Tokenization can support faster settlement, more transparent records, more efficient collateral and liquidity management, and more modern compliance and transfer mechanisms. It also opens the door to a financial system that is more interoperable, responsive, and better able to move assets across markets without the friction that defines much of today’s financial infrastructure.

Mersinger’s testimony emphasizes that tokenization should not be treated as a niche crypto topic. It is part of a broader question about how U.S. capital markets will operate in the years ahead and whether the next generation of financial infrastructure will be built here under U.S. rules and institutions.

Tokenization also advances two bipartisan policy goals. First, it can expand access to investment opportunities for ordinary Americans by lowering barriers to entry, enabling fractional ownership, and opening pathways into asset classes and market opportunities that have historically been harder to access. Second, it can help keep U.S. capital markets the most competitive in the world by improving efficiency, reducing friction, and supporting next-generation financial infrastructure.

“Tokenization is not a side conversation about digital assets. It is a conversation about how the next generation of capital markets will function,” said Mersinger. “If we get the policy right, the United States can lead in building better and more resilient financial markets. If we get it wrong, we will watch that infrastructure develop elsewhere.”

The testimony makes several core points:

• First, tokenized securities are still securities. This is not about avoiding the securities laws. It is about applying them in a way that reflects how blockchain-based infrastructure actually works.
• Second, tokenization can improve the way markets operate. Shared digital records, programmable settlement, and more seamless asset movement can reduce friction, improve transparency, and strengthen the functioning of capital markets.
• Third, on-chain systems that do not exert custody, control, or discretion over user assets warrant a different regulatory approach than frameworks built on traditional intermediary assumptions.
• And fourth, the SEC already has the regulatory tools to support responsible progress, including exemptive relief and iterative pathways, which they have historically used to accommodate and foster market innovation.

Tokenization infrastructure will develop regardless. The real question is whether it develops inside U.S. regulatory oversight or outside it.

Read the testimony here.