The US Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a five-year pathway for trading tokenised shares, offering greater clarity to firms whose digital products preserve full shareholder rights.
The exemption could benefit tokenisation companies including Securitize, Bullish and Superstate, alongside qualifying custodial models such as Dinari. It also provides a potential route into the regulated US market for DeFi-style trading venues and liquidity providers.
However, the framework does not cover synthetic stock tokens that give investors price exposure without ownership rights. Products associated with Robinhood, Kraken and Ondo therefore fall outside the exemption and may need to be adapted if their operators want to offer them in the US under the new arrangements.
The SEC’s decision represents a significant distinction between tokenised securities linked to genuine shareholder rights and products that simply track the performance of traditional equities.
Under the new five-year experiment, companies can explore blockchain-based trading while operating within a clearer regulatory framework. The decision is expected to give tokenisation firms more certainty as they develop systems for issuing, holding and trading digital representations of shares.
It could also create a regulated opening for decentralised finance platforms. Uniswap, Aerodrome and Raydium are among the venues that could potentially benefit, while Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain are among the blockchains that may support activity under the framework.
Participation is unlikely to be unrestricted. Know-your-customer requirements and other regulatory safeguards could limit how quickly DeFi platforms and blockchain networks become involved, particularly where their existing structures do not meet the conditions attached to the exemption.
The decision therefore offers opportunities across several parts of the digital-assets market, from tokenisation companies and custodians to trading venues, liquidity providers and blockchain networks. But those benefits depend on whether individual products and platforms can satisfy the SEC’s requirements.
For firms offering synthetic stock exposure, the exemption leaves a more difficult choice. They may need to change the way their products are structured if they want to qualify for the US market, rather than relying solely on tokens that mirror movements in share prices.
The five-year period gives the sector time to test models for tokenised equity trading, while preserving a regulatory boundary between digital securities that provide shareholder rights and synthetic products that do not.
