The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled “Project Crypto,” an initiative aimed at modernizing securities regulations so that stocks and other financial instruments can be issued, traded and settled directly on public blockchains. Chairman Paul Atkins said in interviews with CNBC and Yahoo Finance on 1 August that the effort is intended to “make sure the next chapter of financial innovation is written right here in America.” He added that updated rules would let U.S. investors participate legally in on-chain incentive programs, support tokenized initial public offerings and bring traditional market infrastructure onto distributed ledgers. Atkins’ remarks mark the agency’s most explicit endorsement to date of blockchain technology. Industry participants said the push could accelerate real-world-asset tokenization and give platforms such as Ethereum a regulatory foothold in the world’s largest capital market.