Paul S. Atkins, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that the Commission has approved an innovation exemption under Section 36 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, temporarily allowing eligible tokenized securities venues to conduct partial trading of tokenized NMS stocks, and granting trading definition exemptions to specific liquidity providers.

Key conditions include: the venue must be a U.S. entity and comply with sanctions; access is limited to specific participants; synthetic tokenized stocks are prohibited, and tokens must be tokenized by the issuer of the underlying stock or an unrelated third party, with holders retaining the same rights and privileges as traditional securities, including dividends and voting; issuers have the right to oppose and prevent their securities from being traded at the venue. Anti-fraud and anti-manipulation provisions continue to apply.

Atkins linked this move to the failure of the market structure bill to advance in the Senate this week, stating that the Commission is bringing capital markets into the digital age within its statutory authority, while not setting today’s technology as tomorrow’s standard, but rather forming more flexible rules through observation. The order seeks public comment.

The exclusion of synthetic exposure means that tokens that provide price but not shareholder rights are not included in this exemption. The issuer's right of opposition turns the on-chain supply of popular stocks into a list that can be blocked by a single vote, rather than an automatic mapping.

Mechanically, this is a limited supply under the constraint of rights integrity. The beneficiaries are custodial and transfer systems that can transfer real shares along with voting proxies and dividends to on-chain balances; the pressured parties are retail products that have sold synthetic stock tokens abroad and cannot prove equivalent shareholder rights. If funds enter TSV, they are buying mapped shares with rights, not perpetual contract-style price chips.

Source: Public Information