SEC Approves Four-Condition Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Stocks, Advancing Bitcoin (BTC) Market Rules

Four Conditions for Tokenized Stocks

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a temporary, conditional framework — the “Innovation Exemption” — that lets designated tokenized securities venues (TSVs) run limited pilots trading tokenized versions of NMS stocks on-chain. Under the relief set out in a statement by Chair Paul Atkins, a TSV using permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools is not immediately classified as an “exchange” under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and liquidity providers committing proprietary capital receive parallel clarity on the “dealer” definition. Four conditions apply: venues must serve US persons and observe OFAC sanctions; access must be permissioned; no synthetic stock is permitted — each token must be issued by the company itself or an unaffiliated third party and carry full dividend and voting rights, so on-chain units track the issuer’s circulating supply rather than a synthetic wrapper; and issuers retain the right to veto trading in their own shares. Anti-fraud and anti-manipulation provisions apply in full. The relief is explicitly temporary: the SEC will take public comment before weighing durable rulemaking. AMC chief executive Adam Aron publicly endorsed the move, citing a five-year trial window and pressing Robinhood to hold its offshore tokenized products to the same investor-protection standard.

Coinbase Files for Stock Perpetuals

Coinbase has filed an application with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list perpetual futures on individual US-listed stocks, which the exchange describes as the first such filing in the United States. The company plans coverage of roughly 50 to 60 large caps — names including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia — and is targeting a launch before the end of the year, pending regulatory sign-off. A perpetual future is a derivative with no expiry date: a periodic funding-rate mechanism pulls the contract price toward the underlying asset’s spot trading level, letting traders hold leveraged positions indefinitely. The structure was popularized in crypto markets, where it became the dominant instrument for leveraged bitcoin exposure, and differs from both dated futures and crypto options in its open-ended tenor. The CFTC cleared the path on May 29, when it approved listing perpetual futures on registered US exchanges, and Coinbase already offers crypto and index-linked perpetuals domestically. Equity-backed perpetuals had previously spread mainly through offshore venues such as Hyperliquid, leaving US regulated exchanges largely out of the market, and prediction-market platform Kalshi has lodged a comparable filing. Leverage caps, trading hours and other parameters remain unset until final approval.

CFTC Proposal Heads to the White House

The CFTC, meanwhile, has formally opened its own rulemaking track. On September 17 the agency sent a proposal titled “Regulation of Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation of Crypto Asset Markets” to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for interagency review; the public docket shows the item in the pre-rule stage, with no draft rule text or covered entities disclosed. The submission follows January’s “Project Crypto,” a joint CFTC-SEC initiative to harmonize digital-asset oversight, and a March release in which the agencies issued an interpretation and guidance on how federal securities laws reach crypto assets. It lands against a stalled legislative backdrop: on September 15 the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the CLARITY Act, rejecting the motion 49-50 against the 60 votes required. The revised Senate Republican text — circulated as the party’s “final” offer — had trimmed Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act protections to Bank Secrecy Act and civil enforcement matters, added an ethics plan requiring large crypto holdings to be divested or blind-trusted, inserted a stablecoin-yield “circuit breaker” answerable to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and tightened conflicts rules for digital commodity exchanges, brokers and dealers. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bitget.

Rulemaking Now Outruns Congress

COINOTAG’s read: with the CLARITY Act shelved for now, US regulators are extending existing statutes rather than waiting for new law — the SEC’s exemption carves a tokenized-equity lane, the CFTC’s proposal sits in OIRA review, and Coinbase is testing how far CFTC product jurisdiction reaches. Macro adds a twist: the Fed’s 25-basis-point hike to 3.75%-4.00%, its first increase in three years, lifts rate-sensitive revenue for fiat-backed issuers such as Circle and Tether — a tailwind absent from the fragile peg mechanics of algorithmic stablecoins — and Grayscale frames the move as a mid-cycle adjustment, not a regime change. The binding constraint ahead is the exemption text itself: temporary, conditional and revocable until durable rules land.