The SEC issued a five-year conditional exemption letting tokenized U.S. stocks trade onchain through permissioned liquidity pools, the same morning the CFTC extended no-action relief on broker registration to passive software providers. Both moves follow the Senate's failure to advance the CLARITY Act, and Uniswap's UNI token rose 19.8% the same day.
The SEC and the CFTC issued crypto exemptions within hours of each other on Thursday, the first concrete use of authorities both chairmen said they would rely on after the Senate blocked the market structure bill.
SEC opens a path for tokenized stocks
The Securities and Exchange Commission granted temporary, conditional relief from the definition of "exchange" to a new category it calls a Tokenized Securities Venue, letting tokenized National Market System stock trade onchain through permissioned liquidity pools. The order expires five years after publication, and the Commission can amend or withdraw it before then.
Trading under the order is capped. A venue may list 75 Tier 1 symbols — S&P 500 and Russell 1000 stocks and certain exchange-traded products — and trade up to 0.25% of the prior month's average daily share volume in each. Tier 2 covers up to 250 remaining NMS stocks at 2.5% of average daily volume, and breaching a cap triggers a three-month trading pause in that security.
The order grants no relief from antifraud provisions, sanctions compliance, or registration requirements for primary offerings, and permits no primary issuance. Venues must run publicly auditable smart contracts, halt trading whenever the primary listing exchange halts the underlying stock, and publish transaction data updated within 10 minutes.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said the Commission is taking a step within its statutory authority to bring capital markets onchain, adding that the measure must be followed by durable rulemaking. According to The Defiant: "Congress was unsuccessful in advancing the CLARITY Act despite the tireless efforts of many", Atkins said.
CFTC widens relief for software providers
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Market Participants Division also told passive software providers they will not be recommended for enforcement over failing to register as introducing brokers, extending a position first granted only to Phantom Technologies in March. Ten conditions apply, including risk disclosures and consent to Commission investigation.
Phantom co-founder and CEO Brandon Millman said the CFTC has now opened that same path to other software providers, calling it a win for the industry.
Uniswap token rises on the news
Uniswap Labs launched Permissioned Pools on its v4 protocol in July, the architecture the SEC order contemplates. Uniswap's UNI token traded at $7.37 on Thursday afternoon, up 19.8% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Bitcoin traded at $76,558, up 1.2%.
Industry groups welcomed the order. Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger called it a critical step toward modernizing U.S. capital markets, while the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association had argued in a prior letter that broad exemptions risk creating parallel but unequal trading ecosystems. The SEC is now soliciting comment on the exemption and next steps.
Source: The Defiant
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