The SEC granted a five-year conditional exemption letting tokenized stocks trade on permissioned onchain venues, and the CFTC opened introducing-broker relief to passive software providers the same morning. Both moves landed two days after the Senate blocked the CLARITY Act. Uniswap's token jumped in response.
The Securities and Exchange Commission granted a five-year conditional exemption on Thursday, letting tokenized National Market System stock trade on permissioned automated market makers. Hours later, Commodity Futures Trading Commission staff opened the same introducing-broker relief to passive software providers across the industry.
Neither action came from Congress. Both followed the Senate's rejection of the CLARITY Act by a 49-50 vote two days earlier, after which the two chairmen said they would write crypto rules without it. Uniswap's UNI token rose 19.8% over 24 hours, trading at $7.37 on Thursday afternoon. Bitcoin was little changed, up 1.2% at $76,558.
Caps limit how much can trade
The exemption creates a new category, a Tokenized Securities Venue, and grants no relief from antifraud rules, sanctions compliance, or primary-offering registration. Trading is capped: a venue may list 75 Tier 1 symbols and trade up to 0.25% of each stock's prior-month average daily volume, while Tier 2 covers up to 250 symbols at a 2.5% volume cap. Breaching a cap triggers a three-month trading pause in that security.
Venues must run publicly auditable smart contracts on public ledgers, halt trading whenever the primary listing exchange halts the underlying stock, and publish transaction data updated within 10 minutes. Commissioner Hester Peirce drew a line around the order's scope: "This order is not about decentralized finance."
CFTC extends relief beyond one company
The CFTC's no-action letter tells passive software providers they will not face enforcement for failing to register as introducing brokers, extending a position first granted to Phantom Technologies in March. Ten conditions apply, including risk disclosures and a written undertaking of joint liability with the broker.
Industry groups welcomed the SEC's order and said they would file comments. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association pushed back earlier, warning that broad exemptions risk creating parallel but unequal trading systems. The SEC is now taking comment on the exemption ahead of its publication in the Federal Register.
Sources: SEC, CFTC, The Defiant
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