SEC Grants Five-Year Exemption For Tokenized Stock Trading Venues
The SEC approved a temporary “Innovation Exemption” that lets qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues trade tokenized National Market System stocks under strict conditions. The tokenized shares must preserve the same rights as the underlying stock, use auditable smart contracts on a public permissionless ledger, and stop trading if the underlying stock is halted. The venues also face limits on symbols and trading volume. The exemption expires five years after publication unless the regulatory framework changes first. This is not a permanent overhaul of U.S. securities law, but it creates a controlled regulatory path for limited on-chain trading of public-company shares and gives the SEC a way to test tokenized market structure while preserving investor protections.
