U.S. SEC Gives Implicit Nod for Tokenized Stocks

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) implicitly granted approval for some stocks and other securities to be tokenized and traded on blockchains.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), the world's largest securities settlement system, said on Thursday that a subsidiary, the Depository Trust Co. (DTC), received a no-action letter allowing it to offer a tokenization service on approved blockchains for three years.

Tokenization is the process of representing stocks, bonds and other real-world assets (RWAs) as digital tokens that can be bought, sold and traded on blockchains, with the aim of achieving greater efficiency and faster settlement.

Some of the biggest names in traditional finance (TradFi), including JPMorgan and BlackRock, have developed projects in this area, demonstrating the potential institutional investment that they can draw to blockchain finance.

The Depository Trust Co.'s authorization applies to the constituents of the Russell 1000 index, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking major indexes and U.S. Treasuries. It plans to begin rolling out the service in the first half of 2026.

A no-action letter is a formal response from the agency to a company stating that the regulator will not take any enforcement action for a proposed activity.