The SEC unveiled a five-year Innovation Exemption on September 17, allowing eligible platforms to facilitate on-chain trading of tokenized US equities backed by real underlying shares, and US platforms moved on it immediately. It landed two days after the Clarity Act died on the Senate floor, which is where all the regulatory attention was. Separately, Deutsche Bank plans to offer Bitcoin and digital asset custody to European institutional clients by the end of 2026, and stablecoin infrastructure firm Bastion received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to apply for a national trust bank charter.