Real stocks are finally coming on blockchain. Here’s how the SEC wants it to work — SkimNews
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- SEC launched an "innovation exemption" giving qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues a five-year window to trade real U.S. stocks on public blockchains via smart contracts and liquidity pools, without registering as national securities exchanges.
- Tokenized shares must preserve voting and dividend rights identical to traditional stock; synthetic products that merely track share prices are excluded from the exemption.
- Trading-volume caps restrict venues to 75 names and 0.25% of average daily volume for the most liquid stocks, rising to 250 names and 2.5% for a second tier, per SEC Director of Trading and Markets Jamie Selway.
- Issuers receive 30 days' notice before any venue lists a tokenized version of their stock and retain veto power over third-party tokenization — a safeguard Fairmint CEO Joris Delanoue called "the key safeguard."
- AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron publicly criticized Robinhood this month for offering AMC-linked tokens without company involvement, surfacing the issuer-veto issue before the rules even took effect.
- Automated market makers and liquidity pools replace traditional order books for eligible trades, with certain liquidity providers receiving conditional relief from SEC dealer registration requirements so pools can actually be funded.
Why it matters: The exemption gives banks, brokers, and crypto firms a controlled sandbox to test DeFi-style infrastructure on regulated U.S. equities without fitting the NYSE/Nasdaq rulebook — but the 0.25% volume cap on top stocks (roughly 100,000 Tesla shares or $36.6 million per day) and issuer veto power keep traditional exchanges and publicly traded companies in the driver's seat for now.
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