A coalition of European financial and tokenization firms has urged EU lawmakers to either remove a proposed 100 billion euro ($116.3 billion) cap on tokenized financial instruments or raise it to at least 500 billion euros.
The draft letter, dated Sept. 7 and addressed to members of the EU Council and the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, said the 500 billion euro threshold should serve as a baseline if legislators choose to retain any ceiling.
Signatories include Nasdaq, Boerse Stuttgart Group, Securitize, the European Ethereum Institute and Axiology. The groups argued that several existing European projects already reach 350 billion euros in scale and plan further expansion, making the proposed 100 billion euro limit insufficient.
The European Commission has proposed raising the current 6 billion euro limit under its Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Pilot Regime to as much as 100 billion euros as part of its Market Integration and Supervision Package. The DLT Pilot Regime, which entered into force in 2023, permits financial firms to test blockchain-based trading and settlement of assets such as stocks and bonds under exemptions from certain EU financial rules.
The letter noted that the proposed thresholds apply to the market value of financial instruments admitted to DLT infrastructure rather than trading volume, making the 100 billion euro cap comparatively small against the size of global equity markets. By contrast, the groups pointed to the United States, where a dominant settlement platform can tokenize US equities and other assets without volume caps, potentially covering up to 150 trillion euros in assets.
The latest appeal follows months of pressure from industry players seeking changes to the DLT regime. In April, 39 financial firms and industry groups, including Nasdaq and Boerse Stuttgart, urged EU policymakers to fast-track reforms and raise the overall limit to between 100 billion and 150 billion euros. That letter also called for broader asset eligibility and the removal of time limits on licenses issued under the regime.
An earlier warning in February came from tokenization and market infrastructure firms including Securitize, 21X and Boerse Stuttgart, which cautioned that existing asset limits, volume caps and time-limited licenses were preventing regulated onchain markets from scaling in Europe. The firms warned that without faster regulatory action, liquidity could migrate to US markets as American regulators moved toward larger-scale tokenization and onchain settlement.
The total value of distributed real-world assets currently stands at approximately $39.15 billion, excluding stablecoins, with US Treasury debt accounting for the largest share at roughly $15.8 billion.
