Development and regulatory policies of cryptocurrencies

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have become an important variable in the global financial system. With the maturity of blockchain technology, new applications such as stablecoins, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization have emerged continuously, and the crypto-asset system has gradually formed a multi-layered and multi-functional complex structure. However, as the market scale expands, problems such as price volatility risks, systemic financial risks and illegal financial activities have become increasingly prominent, prompting the continuous evolution of regulatory policies in various countries. Especially after the concentrated outbreak of multiple industry risk incidents around 2022, the global regulatory attitude has been significantly tightened, and the regulatory framework has gradually evolved from fragmentation to systematization. At the same time, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have entered an important stage of transition from experimental research to large-scale pilots, becoming one of the core paths for the digital transformation of national monetary systems. This paper systematically sorts out the evolutionary logic of cryptocurrencies, compares the changes in regulatory policies of major countries and regions, conducts an in-depth analysis of the development trends of CBDCs and the changes in the regulatory structure of crypto-assets based on the latest global practices from 2020 to 2026, and further explores the evolutionary direction of the asymmetric regulatory framework.