News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
The federal securities regulator created in 1934, which stated on 28 January 2026 that the format in which a security is issued and the method by which holders are recorded do not change how the federal securities laws apply.
Federal securities regulator created in 1934, with a statutory mission to protect investors, maintain fair and orderly markets and facilitate capital formation; it oversees more than 28,000 registered entities and monitors over $100tn of annual equity trading. Its Division of Corporation Finance stated on 28 January 2026 that the format in which a security is issued and the method by which holders are recorded do not change the application of the federal securities laws, and separated three arrangements that are often conflated: an issuer tokenising its own securities so the chain replaces the master securityholder file, a third party issuing crypto assets representing security entitlements in securities it custodies, and a third party issuing its own instrument giving synthetic exposure to a referenced security. That taxonomy matters because only the first leaves the holder with a direct claim on the issuer, while the second and third add the intermediary's insolvency to the risks priced into the token. Chairman Paul Atkins' statement of 7 July 2026 on the regulatory agenda commits the Commission to rules on capital raising with crypto assets and on the custody and trading of tokenized securities onchain.
Developments in which US Securities and Exchange Commission is a named party, newest first.
MoonPay signed a definitive merger agreement on 23 September to acquire North Capital, whose affiliates hold broker-dealer, alternative trading system, transfer agent and investment adviser registrations.
The Innovation Exemption lets a Tokenized Securities Venue trade tokenized listed shares on an automated market maker without registering as an exchange, until September 2031.
Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 failed 49 to 50 on Monday afternoon. The threshold was 60, because since 1975 cloture has needed three-fifths of all senators.
Senate Republicans published 635 pages on Sunday night, two days before a procedural vote that needs sixty. Four changes from the 10 September version have not been read anywhere. The ethics ban no longer expires in 2029.
New York led seventeen other states and the District of Columbia in telling the Senate Banking Committee to vote no.
A 630 page substitute amendment published four days before a cloture vote would make anyone who controls a lending or trading protocol register with the CFTC and answer to the Bank Secrecy Act.
The largest market maker in the United States filed on the SEC and CFTC joint comment file, sixteen days after it closed, to say that binary options on the metrics public companies report are securities, that a venue should not choose its regulator…
A 421-page rewrite of rules untouched since the early 1980s would permit a transfer agent to keep its master securityholder file on a distributed ledger, and would start counting the issues where one does.
The comment period on the Commission's request about ETFs holding crypto assets, event contracts and perpetual futures closed with issuers asking for confidential draft filings and a 45-day clock, a lead market maker asking that every fund launch…
A proposal to rewrite how advisers and funds may hold client assets, crypto included, is at the proposed-rule stage with a notice targeted for October, three years after the last attempt was withdrawn.
The Commission proposed Regulation Crypto Assets on 18 August without holding the open meeting it cancelled four days earlier.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed on 18 August that some stablecoins may sit on a balance sheet as cash equivalents, and set three conditions.
Securitize and Neuberger launched a tokenized high yield credit fund across four blockchains on 18 August, on a fixed income platform the release says oversees more than $230bn.
A cancellation notice dated 13 August withdrew the open meeting called for 10 a.m. on the 14th, at which the Commission was to consider proposing a tailored offering regime for certain crypto assets. No new date was given.
The Division of Investment Management said on 12 August that it would not recommend enforcement action if Franklin Templeton's registered funds put cash and securities lending collateral into its blockchain-recorded government money fund.
A Sunshine Act notice dated 10 August calls an open meeting for 10 a.m. on Friday 14 August, at which the Commission will consider whether to propose a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.
The crypto market maker's New York affiliate is registered with the SEC and admitted to FINRA membership as a proprietary trading firm, able to trade equities and equity options, self-clear digital asset securities for its own account and create and…
The letter puts nearly a million investors' losses at $3.81bn against $636m of gains for the President, and asks whether the coin was a soft rug pull. A blockchain analytics firm told CNN it shows no hallmarks of one, and the SEC would not comment.
The platform that issues BlackRock's BUIDL fund has registered Securitize Capital as an investment adviser, completing a set of licences that now runs from broker-dealer and trading venue to transfer agent, fund administrator and adviser.
DTCC started limited production trading on its DTC Tokenization Service in July 2026, covering Russell 1000 constituent stocks, major ETFs and US Treasury securities.
The Senate Banking Committee released its version of the CLARITY Act on 11 May 2026 and advanced the crypto market structure bill out of committee that month. A further revision was reported in July 2026 as negotiators worked toward a bipartisan compromise.
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a Nasdaq rule change on 18 March 2026 allowing certain tokenized securities to trade on the exchange, alongside an interpretation of how the federal securities laws apply to tokenized instruments.
A definitive merger agreement would make North Capital Investment Technology a wholly owned MoonPay subsidiary, bringing two SEC-registered broker-dealers, the PPEX alternative trading system, a transfer agent and an investment adviser inside a payments company. MoonPay states no price; CoinDesk and Fortune each put it above $60m in stock on unnamed sources.
Release 34-106402 grants temporary conditional relief to Tokenized Securities Venues from the exchange definition and to certain liquidity providers from the dealer definition, until 17 September 2031. Smart contracts must sit on a public permissionless ledger, issuers can object to third-party tokenizations, and Tier 1 trading is capped at 75 symbols and 0.25 per cent of prior-month volume.
Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 failed at 2:19 p.m. against a three-fifths requirement of 60 votes, so the chamber never took the bill up and no text was voted on. The Senate's roll call record gives four Republicans among the 50 nays, alongside 44 Democrats and two independents, with one Democrat not voting.
Lummis, Boozman and Scott released a 635 page substitute for H.R. 3633, claiming 126 changes requested by Democrats. Read against the 10 September version, the ethics sunset of noon on 20 January 2029 is gone, the developer shield no longer reaches 18 U.S.C. 1960, and the Treasury circuit-breaker on stablecoin rewards must be triggered within 18 months of enactment.
New York led seventeen other jurisdictions in a letter to the Senate Banking Committee objecting that the bill gives the SEC preemption authority indirectly through a new qualified transaction loophole in the Securities Act of 1933, and would render the covered security designations in section 18 meaningless. That provision is unchanged from the version published four days earlier.
Senator Cynthia Lummis published a 630 page substitute amendment to H.R. 3633 ahead of a Senate vote on 15 September. It requires rules for persons who control a non-decentralized finance trading protocol to register with the CFTC and to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, and preempts state securities and commodities law over protected developer activities.
The market maker filed on the agencies' joint comment file on the swap and security-based swap definitions, saying binary options on issuers' reported metrics are securities, that a venue should not choose its regulator by its own characterisation of a product, and that equity-linked perpetuals should not be approved until the classification is settled.
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed Release No. 34-106246 on 1 September 2026, rewriting transfer agent rules not substantively updated since the early 1980s. The amended definition would permit a transfer agent to use a blockchain or other distributed ledger as its master securityholder file or part of it, and new Form TA-2 questions would count the issues where one does.
Comments on File No. S7-2026-24 were due on 31 August 2026. Issuers asked for confidential draft registrations and a 45-day staff clock; Charles Schwab opposed a fully confidential process and Jane Street asked that every fund launch with at least two authorised participants. Kalshi asked that registered funds be permitted to hold event contracts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's Amendments to the Custody Rules, RIN 3235-AN46, sits at the proposed rule stage with a notice targeted for October 2026, covering custody of advisory client and fund assets including crypto. The Block and CoinDesk reported on 26 August that it had gone to the White House for review; the agenda entry carries no date for that step.
The Commission proposed a tailored offering regime for crypto assets on 18 August 2026, five days after cancelling the meeting called to consider it. Two registration exemptions, a safe harbour perfected by the issuer's own certification on a new Form TR, and a definition of qualified purchaser that would preempt state registration requirements. Comments close sixty days after publication.
Securitize and Neuberger launched the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Sui on 18 August 2026. The fund's Form D, filed the same day, records a British Virgin Islands issuer relying on Rule 506(c) and section 3(c)(7), a $100,000 minimum investment, and $5.1m sold to two investors on the date of first sale.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed illustrative examples for Topic 230 on 18 August 2026 setting out when a digital asset meets the existing definition of cash equivalents: an on-demand contractual redemption right, a direct right against the issuer, and segregated short-term liquid reserves held at least one for one. Comments close on 19 November 2026.
A cancellation notice dated 13 August 2026 withdrew the open meeting called for 10 a.m. on 14 August, at which the Commission was to consider proposing a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets. No reason and no new date were given. The meeting agenda of 10 August names the item Regulation Crypto Assets.
The Division of Investment Management said on 12 August 2026 that it would not recommend enforcement action under section 17(f) and rule 17f-2 if the group's registered funds custody Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund shares with its affiliated transfer agent, on conditions requiring that agent to keep the power to freeze, migrate and restore the official record.
A Sunshine Act notice dated 10 August 2026 called an open meeting for 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Friday 14 August, at which the Commission will consider whether to issue a release proposing new rules creating a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets. The notice names no rule and no scope.
Wintermute said on 6 August 2026 that its affiliate Wintermute USA LLC had registered as a broker-dealer with the Securities and Exchange Commission and joined FINRA, as a proprietary trading firm able to trade equities and equity options, act as an authorised participant for exchange-traded products and self-clear digital asset securities for its own account. BrokerCheck dates the approval to the same day.
In a letter dated 3 August 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal asked SEC chair Paul Atkins to investigate the $TRUMP memecoin for illegal fraud or unjust enrichment, arguing it may be a gradual rug pull. The letter cites press estimates that nearly a million investors lost over $3.81bn to the end of June while Trump made $636m. The SEC declined to comment.
Securitize said on 27 July 2026 that its Securitize Capital subsidiary had registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment adviser, having previously operated as an exempt reporting adviser. The registration sits alongside the group's registered broker-dealer, alternative trading system, transfer agent and fund administration businesses, which together service more than $5bn in tokenized funds.
The SEC approved a Nasdaq proposed rule change, as modified by Amendment No. 2, permitting securities to trade on the exchange in tokenized form through DTC's tokenization pilot, in Release 34-105047. Eligible participants may set a tokenization flag on orders in Russell 1000 constituents and large index ETFs; tokenized and conventional shares trade on the same order book with the same priority provided they remain fungible and share the same CUSIP and symbol.
Staff in the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets told The Depository Trust Company that they would not recommend enforcement action over the preliminary base version of DTCC Tokenization Services, under which participants may elect to have their security entitlements to DTC-held securities recorded on a distributed ledger rather than only on DTC's centralised ledger. The relief covers Regulation SCI, the section 19(b) rule filing requirement and parts of Rules 17ad-22(e) and 17ad-25, expires three years after launch and is conditioned on 16 representations.
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved rule changes allowing eight spot ether exchange-traded products to list on NYSE Arca, Nasdaq and Cboe BZX. The order relied on the Commission's own analysis of correlation between CME ether futures and Coinbase spot prices from October 2021 to March 2024, which it put at no less than 96.2% at hourly intervals, 85.7% at five-minute intervals and 67.1% at one-minute intervals.
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded product shares, having previously rejected such applications. The chair's statement attributed the change to the D.C. Circuit's decision vacating the Commission's denial of Grayscale's proposed conversion.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Terraform Labs PTE Ltd and its founder Do Hyeong Kwon with securities fraud in connection with the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and the LUNA token. The complaint stated that UST depegged from the dollar in May 2022 and that the price of UST and its sister tokens fell to close to zero.
The summary prospectus for the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, dated 6 April 2021, stated that ownership of the fund's shares "will also be recorded on the Stellar network's blockchain", with the transfer agent's book-entry record remaining determinative in any conflict. It made a registered US money market fund, rather than a token referencing one, the vehicle through which investors held a blockchain record of fund shares.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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