Mayor Eric Adams of New York City has established a new crypto hub within City Hall. On October 14, he signed Executive Order 57, which created the Office of Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology. This unit operates within the Mayor’s Office, reports to the city CTO, and is led by Moises Rendon.
The city claims this is the first municipal office in the U.S. focused on digital assets. The order is effective immediately.
What does that actually unlock?
The order instructs the office to coordinate efforts across various agencies, research and propose policies, educate the public about risks and fraud, and collaborate with the city’s economic-development sector on investment and job opportunities.
In simpler terms, this provides a direct pathway for startups and large organizations to engage with City Hall on pilot projects, procurement, and regulatory issues that span multiple departments.
This is significant for New York. State law currently governs the licensing of exchanges and custodians through the BitLicense framework, which many critics argue results in high costs and long timelines.
While a City Hall office cannot alter state regulations, it can streamline how municipal agencies assess blockchain projects, assist major banks with public-sector applications, and collaborate with state and federal agencies when projects encounter regulatory ambiguities.
Adams has publicly stated his commitment to integrating crypto within the city, and this initiative hires consistent staff to pursue that vision.
Internationally, similar strategies are already in motion.
In 2023, Hong Kong established a governmental Web3 Task Force, led by the Financial Secretary, to guide policy and industry collaboration. This group was refreshed with new members in 2025, demonstrating resilience through varying market conditions.
Singapore’s MAS oversees Project Guardian, a regulatory initiative where banks and asset managers experiment with tokenization for funds, foreign exchange, and collateral. The project has expanded in 2024–2025 to include more global buy-side participants and serves as an ongoing sandbox to facilitate real-world applications.
Meanwhile, Dubai advanced further by enacting VARA in 2022, establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers. This created a clear licensing pathway, and the authority has since issued a full regulatory framework now recognized by established law firms as a standard.
New York’s approach is different.
This is a municipal initiative, rather than a sector-specific regulator, focusing on both public-sector modernization and industry expansion. This unique position provides advantages. The city’s substantial purchasing power and data infrastructure can enhance the effectiveness of pilots, and the office can leverage procurement to align private standards with public necessities, such as identity verification, payment systems, or systems that need to integrate with existing infrastructure.
So how will this impact businesses?
First, there’s a unified point of contact. If you’re a custody provider ensuring secure payments to city vendors or a bank exploring tokenized deposits for municipal receivables, you now have a designated representative in City Hall to facilitate agency collaboration and maintain project timelines.
The office is tasked with liaising with OTI and EDC, which means that projects can advance from concept to implementation without getting stuck in bureaucratic delays.
Second, expect a pipeline for pilot projects. Initial experiments will likely leverage blockchain’s auditing capabilities, such as permit and license registries, automated vendor payments, grants management, and proof-of-delivery for social services.
Singapore’s Project Guardian has demonstrated that tokenized collateral and investment units can be successful in controlled conditions; a similar pilot in New York could involve city treasurers and their banking partners.
Third, there will be clearer guidelines for risk management teams. The office is charged with public education regarding scams and consumer risk. If it publishes guidelines for vendor assessment or secure wallet practices, compliance teams at exchanges and fintech companies will have a shared framework for reference in requests for proposals and risk assessments. This could shorten sales cycles and reduce redundancies across divisions.
However, there are limitations.
The office cannot issue licenses, cannot override state or federal laws, and its effectiveness will rely on available funding and personnel.
With Adams set to leave office in January 2026, the continuation of these efforts hinges on whether future leadership views this initiative as vital infrastructure or merely a political gesture. Despite these caveats, the organizational structure aligns with a broader trend: jurisdictions that centralize digital asset endeavors within designated entities tend to advance more swiftly from discussion to implementation.
The Hong Kong task force and Dubai’s VARA represent two distinct approaches: one focused on advisory and coordination, the other acting as a regulatory authority with a binding set of guidelines.
If you are a cryptocurrency business working with clients in New York, the previous approach involved navigating a disparate group of agency staff who change every budget cycle.
Now, there is a dedicated office with a defined purpose. This alone lowers transaction costs. If you’re a bank trading tokenized assets in Singapore or enhancing a compliance initiative for Dubai, you now have a reason to include New York City in your list of “active jurisdictions.”
While the office cannot amend the BitLicense, it can simplify interactions in New York, which is crucial as the ease of doing business often dictates where new pilots will be launched.
For a city deeply rooted in capital markets, this represents a strategic move to integrate blockchains into civic operations rather than relegating them to a secondary role. If the office successfully launches even a few credible pilots and produces guidance documents, it could shift the prevailing question from “can the city utilize this technology?” to “which agency will lead the way?”
