The Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing an exemption that would allow publicly traded stocks to trade as blockchain tokens 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in fractional sizes and with near-instant settlement. The so-called innovation exemption would create a lighter compliance path for platforms offering tokenized versions of household names like Apple, Tesla and Nvidia, letting them trade continuously rather than only during the traditional 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern trading window.
Under the framework, platforms offering tokenized equities would still be required to preserve traditional shareholder rights such as dividends and, in some structures, voting access — a distinction from earlier synthetic tokenized-stock products that mirrored a share's price without conferring any of the underlying ownership rights.
A framework that stalled once already
This isn't the SEC's first attempt to push the exemption forward. The agency delayed a broader plan to grant exemptions for tokenized-asset trading back in May, after initial signals in January that its Division of Corporation Finance, Division of Investment Management and Division of Trading and Markets were converging on a shared approach to how tokenized securities should be classified under existing securities law. The renewed push in August suggests the delay was procedural rather than a retreat from the underlying policy goal.
Wall Street infrastructure is already being built ahead of the rule
Traditional exchanges aren't waiting for the exemption to finalize. The New York Stock Exchange has separately disclosed plans for its own tokenized-securities trading platform designed to run continuously, and the SEC has already approved a related Nasdaq proposal permitting securities to trade in tokenized form. That infrastructure build-out gives the coming exemption a ready-made set of venues to apply to as soon as it clears, rather than requiring the market to construct compliant trading rails from scratch.
Related: Securitize Stock Drops 20% as Tokenization Revenue Misses Estimates
For crypto-native platforms, the exemption could open a path to offering on-chain trading of US equities without full broker-dealer registration — a structural shift that would blur the line between crypto exchanges and traditional brokerages more than any single product launch has managed so far.
