The SEC has granted a conditional 5-year exemption for select U.S.-based venues to trade tokenized versions of National Market System stocks without registering as full exchanges. This is not a blanket approval for all platforms or all forms of tokenized stocks.
The order, issued on September 17, is highly specific: it applies only to venues operating with permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. It does not extend to every trading model or to any venue that wants to list a stock token.
The exemption also temporarily waves some dealer registration requirements for liquidity providers who supply tokenized shares to approved pools using their own capital. The SEC’s stated aim is to test onchain trading of certain tokenized equities within a controlled, permissioned environment, while collecting public feedback.
The real takeaway is that this is a market-structure experiment, not a greenlight for the entire tokenized equities space. Many platforms, products, and models remain outside the order’s scope. For now, a supervised path for tokenized U.S. stocks exists, but it’s conditional and tightly defined.