BCG-WEF Project: Digital Asset Regulation

Regulation of Digital Assets in a Shifting Global Landscape

Digital assets are moving from a standalone market into the infrastructure of finance. Their significance increasingly lies beyond the value of the asset class itself, in their potential to change how money, securities, and collateral move through the financial system. As this integration advances, regulation also takes on wider strategic significance: digital money and settlement networks can influence currency use, capital flows, sanctions enforcement, market competitiveness, and the degree of influence jurisdictions retain over financial activity conducted through global digital networks.

The World Economic Forum and BCG have developed a regulatory playbook for jurisdictions navigating this transition. Its nine dimensions define the conditions required for digital finance to function safely and at institutional scale:

The framework shifts the regulatory question from whether a product is regulated to whether the surrounding financial system can support institutional use.

There is no single regulatory sequence for building a credible institutional market. Jurisdictions start from different legal systems, financial structures, policy objectives, and supervisory capabilities. Authorities can use the playbook to identify the most material risks and constraints, sequence priorities as adoption develops, and determine where existing rules are sufficient or need to adapt. Cross-border growth will depend less on identical rules than on sufficient trust in regulatory outcomes, alongside deliberate choices about where international integration creates value and where stronger domestic or regional control remains important.

Turning the regulatory framework into practice requires more than rule-making. Common standards are needed to avoid fragmented interpretation, comparable activities should receive comparable treatment across regulatory perimeters, and supervisory expectations must evolve with evidence from real-world use. Industry and regulators need to work together to make that happen.

If regulation makes digital asset markets viable at scale, value creation and competitive advantage will shift across the sector. Firms that benefit from today’s frictions will face pressure even without launching digital asset products. Advantage will increasingly rest on scarce capabilities, such as liquidity, risk bearing, trusted control, distribution, and market access. Traditional institutions and digital-native firms will compete more directly across the same parts of the value chain.