The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly preparing to roll out an "innovation exemption" to greenlight the trading of tokenized versions of public company stocks on decentralized platforms. The exemption could come as soon as this week.
In the near future, parallel blockchain-based equity markets will become a reality soon.
Tokenized stock futures
The framework will test whether stock trading can successfully migrate onto crypto infrastructure
Notably, it will be possible to offer the share price of a public company without requiring the backing or consent of the company.
The transfer of traditional shareholder rights is a major hurdle for tokenized stocks. Third-party tokens are not issued by the underlying company, meaning that they do not provide voting power or dividend payouts.
However, the SEC's draft proposal requires that decentralized platforms must actively provide these traditional benefits to the token holders. If a platform fails to facilitate dividends or voting rights, it will lose its regulatory authorization.
The current tokenized stock market
Tokenized stock offerings have already been pioneered globally by major crypto-native financial firms.
Third-party custodians purchase and hold real shares of a traditional stock, and a certain platform mints a corresponding crypto token. Usually, it is an ERC-20 token on networks like Ethereum or Solana.
Major firms such as Backed Finance, Swarm Markets, and Dinari have successfully launched platforms offering these assets. Furthermore, earlier in 2026, Ondo Global Markets rolled out over 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs.
Some of the largest and most widely traded tokenized stock offerings include those that offer the shares of Tesla, Google, Nvidia, and so on.
Dan Burgin
