Nasdaq, Boerse Stuttgart urge EU to adjust tokenization trial caps

Two of the world’s most prominent exchange operators are telling Brussels the same thing: your tokenization sandbox is too small, and the grown-ups are leaving the playground. Nasdaq and the Boerse Stuttgart Group, along with other financial market stakeholders, have formally asked EU lawmakers to either scrap or dramatically increase the caps on tokenized securities imposed by the bloc’s DLT Pilot Regime. Their argument is blunt: at current limits, Europe cannot compete with the United States for institutional-scale digital asset issuance. The cap problem, explained The DLT Pilot Regime launched in 2023 as a regulatory sandbox where exchanges and settlement systems could experiment with distributed ledger technology for trading traditional securities in tokenized form. The regime currently caps the aggregate market value of all tokenized securities at €6 billion, with an exit threshold of €9 billion. It also restricts participation to smaller securities and bonds under MiFID II rules. The European Commission recognized the constraint and proposed raising the ceiling to €100 billion as part of a December 2025 revision, along with expanding the list of eligible assets under MiFID II...