🛡 Compliance by Design: Unlocking the Legal Infrastructure Behind Tokenization

Insights from STO Summit Spring 2025

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How do we build real-world asset (RWA) tokenization on solid legal ground?

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At this year’s STO Summit Spring 2025, top legal and regulatory minds from across the globe took the virtual stage to answer this critical question in the panel: “Compliance by Design: Legal Frameworks for Security Token Issuance.”

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Representing Brickken was Elisenda Fàbrega, General Counsel, who joined an impressive lineup of speakers to explore the evolving intersection of legal frameworks, global regulation, and blockchain-based securities.

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🎥 Watch the Full Panel Discussion

Compliance Isn’t an Add-On — It Starts at the Smart Contract

The panel kicked off by addressing a fundamental shift: with tokenized assets, compliance isn’t just a back-office function—it should  be embedded into the design of any tokenization to be undertaken.

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“We’re engineering compliance into the asset from day one.” — Elisenda Fàbrega, Brickken

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Panelists emphasized the complexity however beneficial of aligning investor protections with jurisdictional differences, especially when crossing borders. Each country has its own expectations around ownership rights, KYC/AML, and disclosures—yet tokens travel globally in seconds.

🌍 Cross-Border Issuance: Opportunity Meets Complexity

As tokenization scales across continents, fragmentation in legal frameworks becomes a double-edged sword.

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🇪🇺 Europe was highlighted as having a more mature regulatory infrastructure (thanks to MiCA, MiFIDII, and national regimes). But that maturity also introduces higher compliance costs and slower deployment.

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According to one of the speakers, Latin America, particularly El Salvador, was praised for its agility and innovation-friendly laws, offering lower legal barriers and faster tokenization cycles—an attractive combination for early-stage projects and new asset classes.

🛠 Designing Tokens for Legal Clarity

The discussion also addressed the importance of smart contract architecture that aligns with asset type, jurisdiction, and investor protections.

At Brickken, this means:

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• Supporting modular token design tailored to securities, debt, equity or/and other RWA.
• Ensuring legal frameworks are reflected within the Digital Asset Platform itself.
• Enabling issuers to manage compliance end-to-end, even without blockchain experience.

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“If you want to issue a token, you must first understand the laws that apply to your asset and where it will be offered. Tools are only useful if they’re built on legal reality.” — Elisenda Fàbrega, Brickken

⚖️ Compliance by Design = Better Risk Management

Risk isn’t just about the asset. It’s also about:

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• The issuer’s jurisdiction
• The blockchain ecosystem
• The custody and trading infrastructure
• And the investor’s ability to understand what they’re buying
  
  

Panelist Timm Reinsdorf (Particula) highlighted how even a U.S. Treasury note can have vastly different legal and technical characteristics depending on the tokenization provider. That’s why investors now need multi-dimensional due diligence tools—not just a prospectus.

A Final Word: Regulation Enables Innovation

The takeaway? Regulation isn't a barrier, it’s a necessary enabler. But to succeed, we need to stop thinking in silos. Tokenization can not be understood as  one-size-fits-all, and each type of structure, asset, etc. needs its specific compliance tools and legal frameworks.

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At Brickken, we believe the future of finance is both decentralized and legally sound. That’s why we build our tools to support compliance as a first principle, helping issuers to navigate the first AML’s complexities, scale securely, and unlock capital around the world.

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👉 Explore our Digital Asset Platform 

🧡 Join the community on Telegram to keep the conversation going.

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