America’s largest crypto exchange Coinbase hopes to soon offer trading services for tokenized equities, according to a Reuters interview with the firm’s chief legal officer published Tuesday. Paul Grewal said that it was a “huge priority” for Coinbase to secure SEC approval to allow such assets to trade. In an X post afterwards, Grewal said that he was merely echoing a Coinbase position made public this spring.
“We’ve been saying since earlier this year that [the SEC] should enable markets to unlock tokenized securities,” he wrote. If approved, equities such as tech stocks would be tokenized and offered via blockchain networks, potentially leading to lower transaction costs and 24-7 trading, Grewal said. A tokenized stock is a digital asset that represents equity in a company.
Decrypt in April reported that SEC regulators at a digital assets roundtable said that the agency would be open to a regulatory sandbox for crypto exchanges to experiment with new offerings. This could include things like tokenized stocks, Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda said at the time. Commissioner Hester Peirce, who heads up the SEC’s new crypto task force, said that “participating firms could see what works and what doesn’t, technically and commercially.”
Just last week, SEC Chair Paul Atkins affirmed that perspective, noting plans for an “innovation exemption” to let DeFi builders experiment on-chain with new products. The news was well received by traders, as Ethereum DeFi tokens broadly rose in value following the comments. The SEC under the new Trump administration has taken a more crypto-friendly stance.
Under Democratic ex-president Joe Biden’s leadership, the regulator went after top crypto firms with lawsuits for allegedly breaking securities laws. But since U.S. President Donald Trump took charge on Jan. 20, the SEC has scrapped a number of those lawsuits. Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the digital asset space and received financial backing from industry leaders. Coinbase isn’t the only American exchange planning to offer tokenized stocks. Kraken in May said it would soon offer over 50 U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds to overseas customers using the Solana blockchain.
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