SEC Grants Five-Year Innovation Exemption for Tokenized U.S. Equities, Lifting Robinhood and Coinbase

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced a provisional, conditional exemption allowing certain tokenized U.S.-listed equities to trade on-chain under specified conditions, while S&P Global agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, a firm specializing in smart contract security infrastructure. The SEC measure, set out in a "Statement on Innovation Exemptions" signed by Commissioner Mark T. Ueda, guarantees holders of equity tokens the same rights as holders of conventional shares and requires third parties to notify the issuer of the underlying stock in writing before dealing in tokenized shares. According to S&P Global, OpenZeppelin's technology has supported the transfer of more than $37 trillion in value cumulatively, including major stablecoins and tokenized funds. Following these announcements, the market capitalization of DeFi-related tokens rose about $7 billion on Friday, climbing 8.8% to $79.8 billion, while the total market capitalization of the broader crypto market rose 4% to $2.7 trillion. Hyperliquid's HYPE jumped 10.8% to an all-time high of about $90.46, giving it a market capitalization of $20.12 billion; Uniswap's UNI rose 29.1% over 24 hours to about $9.00, for a market capitalization of $5.59 billion; and Aave's AAVE gained 9.5% to about $135.28. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said the SEC is trying to put in place as much of a crypto regulatory framework as it can under its existing authority, and described tokenization as a massive tide.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has cleared a path for tokenized US stocks, bringing the market closer to 24/7 trading under a five-year innovation exemption that lets eligible platforms trade tokenized US equities through blockchain-based liquidity pools. No platform has been individually approved, and the framework is not yet operational, though trading could start as soon as 30 days out. The exemption covers secondary trading only, not IPOs or issuance of new shares, and tokens must be tied to existing publicly traded equities rather than price trackers, with holders receiving the same economic interest, dividends, voting rights, liquidation rights and shareholder communications as conventional shareholders. Issuing companies get a veto: if an unaffiliated third party such as an exchange wants to tokenize a company's stock, the company receives 30 days to object. Smart contracts must be public and auditable on a public permissionless blockchain, not walled-garden private chains, while traders and wallets are verified and whitelisted for sanctions and AML compliance, and tokenized stocks can trade in crypto-style pairs, including tokenized stock against tokenized stock, a permitted stablecoin, another non-security crypto asset, or tokenized money market funds. The deliberately small pilot has multiple tiers: for the largest Tier one stocks each venue is limited to 75 symbols and 0.25% of each stock's prior month average daily volume, Tier two allows 250 symbols and 2.5% of volume, and repeatedly exceeding a limit triggers a three-month trading pause in that stock. Around-the-clock trading and self-custody are possible but not guaranteed and will be up to the exchange, and the relief exempts only two narrow requirements: venues from registering as conventional exchanges, and qualifying AMM liquidity providers from dealer registration and anti-fraud and market manipulation rules.