- Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov met with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and White House crypto liaison Patrick Witt to discuss integrating tokenised real-world assets into traditional financial markets.
- Nazarov expressed optimism about the regulatory shift away from Gary Gensler’s enforcement approach, believing blockchain infrastructure could comply with broker-dealer rules by mid-2026.
- He predicts real-world asset tokenisation will eventually represent the majority of the crypto market cap, surpassing traditional cryptocurrencies in institutional adoption.
- LINK token, currently trading at US$22.58 and ranked 12th largest crypto, could benefit significantly from increased demand as tokenised asset adoption grows, with analysts predicting potential explosive growth.
Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov met US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins and White House crypto liaison Patrick Witt, highlighting regulators’ focus on integrating tokenised real-world assets into financial markets in an efficient and safe manner.
During an interview with CoinDesk, Nazarov said he was impressed by how interest toward crypto has changed under the new leadership – moving away from Gary Gensler’s regulation-by-enforcement approach.
Nazarov also explained he’s optimistic that blockchain infrastructure could fit within broker-dealer and transfer agent rules, enabling full-scale tokenisation as early as mid-2026.
“While cryptocurrencies define the majority of our industry’s value today, I personally feel very strongly that the real-world asset trend and digital-asset tokenization in the institutional world will grow to be the majority of the market cap in our industry,” Nazarov said, adding that the SEC Chair “has very clear ideas and goals with getting the traditional financial system operating correctly on-chain.”
Oracle network Chainlink specialises in providing trusted, verifiable real-world data to blockchains, which is essential for tokenised assets like stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities.
The SEC and White House openly discussing bringing traditional finance on-chain directly addresses the challenge Chainlink is solving: how to ensure secure, compliant, real-world asset data flows into smart contracts. This directly strengthens the narrative that Chainlink’s infrastructure is indispensable.
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LINK Price Set to Benefit from Regulatory Change
LINK, the native token of the Chainlink network, meanwhile remains a top player in the sector, ranking as the 12th largest crypto with a market cap of US$15.3 billion (AU$23.3 billion). At the time of writing, LINK trades for US$22.58 (AU$34.41).
LINK is still short of an all-time high (ATH) made in 2021, when the price reached US$52.88 (AU$80.58), now trading 57% below that level.
Nazarov’s optimism about full-scale tokenisation by mid-2026 sets a concrete timeline. With RWAs projected to grow into the trillions of dollars, Chainlink oracles and CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) could become the plumbing connecting banks, brokers, custodians and DeFi.
More RWA adoption means more demand for LINK tokens, which are staked by node operators to secure this data infrastructure.
Crypto analyst Ali Charts believes that LINK could soon see explosive growth, doubling the previous ATH.
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