Morning Minute: SEC Approves ‘Innovation Exemption’ Moving Tokenized Stocks Forward
The SEC approved an Innovation Exemption allowing qualifying venues to trade tokenized U.S. stocks on public blockchains without registering as national exchanges. These “Tokenized Securities Venues” can use AMMs and liquidity pools on permissionless chains, and firms providing liquidity get separate relief from dealer registration. Eligible firms can begin operating after notifying the SEC; the exemption took effect immediately and lasts five years. The rules apply only to real tokenized stocks with full shareholder rights, including dividends and voting, not synthetic price trackers. An unaffiliated party may tokenize a company’s stock, but the issuer gets 30 days to object and stop the process. This gives companies some control over whether their shares are tokenized. The move is framed as a major step toward moving traditional assets onchain after Congress failed to pass the Clarity Act. It also comes as Robinhood and Coinbase had already signaled redemption and voting rights for stock tokens, and as S&P Global acquired OpenZeppelin, highlighting growing institutional infrastructure for onchain markets.
