The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order on 17 September 2026 granting Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) a five-year conditional exemption from the legal definition of an exchange, letting qualified venues trade tokenised National Market System stocks onchain through permissioned AMM Liquidity Pools, confirmed in the announcement.
Chairman Paul S. Atkins said the move brings America’s capital markets into the digital age: “Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a significant step forward, within its statutory authority, to bring America’s capital markets into the digital age by facilitating onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks through the ‘Innovation Exemption.'”
What the order permits
A TSV can operate without registering as an exchange so long as its smart contracts are auditable, public and deployed on a public, permissionless distributed ledger, with participants permissioned. Liquidity providers supplying tokenised stock with proprietary capital also gain conditional relief from the dealer definition under Exchange Act section 3(a)(5).
Entry is by notice rather than designation: any platform that believes it can meet the SEC’s definition and comply with the conditions only needs to provide notice before opening a tokenisation operation, according to the agency. The exemptions expire five years after Federal Register publication, a date not yet set, so the clock has not started.
The relief is hedged with conditions. Tokenised stock must give holders the same rights as the traditional shares, including dividends and voting. Synthetic or derivative tokens that merely track price are explicitly excluded. Venues face limits on the number of symbols and volume traded, must halt tokenised trading whenever the underlying stock is halted on its primary exchange, and must publish USD-denominated transaction data including prices, sizes and daily volumes.
How much money is on the table
Citi analysts have estimated that tokenised assets could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030, and Nasdaq and the NYSE are already exploring tokenised stock offerings. Because entry requires only notice, the framework lowers the barrier for exchanges and newer crypto-native venues alike to compete for that lane within the five-year window.
The order arrives days after the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act stalled in the Senate on 15 September, with 49 of the 60 votes needed to proceed, meaning the framework rests on agency authority rather than statute. Atkins said the exemption must be followed by durable rulemaking to keep onchain markets a viable pathway, and his agency solicited public comment on possible modifications while hosting a roundtable on around-the-clock trading the same day.
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Saqib Iqbal
