SEC Readies Tokenized Stock Framework as DTCC, Nasdaq and ICE Race to Modernize Wall Street

Crypto News

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing a sweeping proposal that could establish a formal trading framework for tokenized equities, a step that would push Wall Street firmly onto blockchain rails. Officials familiar with the deliberations indicate the agency will roll out an "innovation exemption" allowing platforms to list digital versions of publicly traded securities under a lighter regulatory regime, with a release possible within days. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has previously signaled support for onchain trading systems, settlement infrastructure and regulated custody, suggesting the move is part of a broader effort to formalize digital asset rulemaking rather than a one-off pilot.

Parallel to the regulatory push, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation said it will begin limited production trades of tokenized assets in July, ahead of a wider launch in October. The system will allow tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs to be backed one-to-one by securities already held inside DTCC's infrastructure. Nasdaq is also advancing a framework for issuers to mint blockchain-based shares while preserving traditional ownership rights, a plan the SEC cleared in March. Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the NYSE, separately unveiled tokenized stock and crypto-linked product plans through a partnership tied to OKX.

A new institutional research effort has profiled 15 infrastructure firms anchoring the rails Wall Street is migrating onto. The longlist spans public Layer 1s, public Layer 2s, permissioned enterprise distributed ledgers, modular data availability layers and post-trade plumbing. Avalanche's subnet architecture, rebranded as Avalanche L1s, has already hosted a tokenized KKR private equity fund through Securitize, alongside pilots from JPMorgan Onyx, Citi and Franklin Templeton. Coinbase's Base, an Ethereum optimistic rollup with roughly $3 billion in total value locked, hosts JPMorgan's Kinexys JPMD tokenized deposit and the bulk of agentic x402 payment flow.

A complementary survey of 10 production enterprise deployments quantifies how deeply traditional finance has already wired itself into onchain settlement. BNY Mellon's Digital Asset Platform sits inside a $55.8 trillion assets-under-custody book and acts as primary cash custodian and administrator for the IBIT spot Bitcoin ETF since January 2024. Broadridge's Distributed Ledger Repo processes more than $1 trillion per month in tokenized repo trades for participants including UBS, Société Générale, HSBC and BNY Mellon, with Kinexys interoperability for collateral. Citi Token Services has run tokenized deposits across the US, Singapore and the UK since 2023.

Soluna Holdings underscored how the energy-intensive side of the industry is repositioning around the same institutional demand for compute. The digital infrastructure company posted a 58% year-on-year revenue jump to $9.4 million in the first quarter, marking its fourth straight quarter of sequential growth. Data center hosting generated $6.7 million, eclipsing roughly $2.2 million from Bitcoin mining as halving economics tightened. Net losses widened to $17.9 million on higher stock-based compensation and financing costs, but Soluna closed the quarter with $68.6 million in cash to fund AI and high-performance computing expansion at its Texas Dorothy and Kati sites.

Political spending is following the same institutional vector. Protect Progress, a political action committee affiliated with the crypto industry-backed Fairshake, has poured more than $4.2 million in supportive media into Georgia's 13th Congressional district primary on Tuesday, where state representative Jasmine Clark faces a competitive Democratic field. Fairshake spent over $130 million in the 2024 cycle, helping engineer what Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong called the "most pro-crypto Congress ever." Not every bet has landed — Illinois lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton won her March Senate primary despite an $8 million opposition campaign, a reminder that voter loyalty is not for sale.

Taken together, the day's developments point to a single thematic arc: the institutionalization of crypto is accelerating on every front simultaneously. Regulators are drafting the rulebook, exchanges and clearing houses are rebuilding the plumbing, banks are running production-scale tokenization across trillions in collateral, miners are pivoting to AI compute, and industry capital is buying durable political alignment. What began as an outsider experiment has matured into a coordinated effort to re-engineer the $126 trillion global equity market and its adjacent rails, with onchain settlement, tokenized deposits and regulated custody emerging as the connective tissue between traditional finance and digital assets.