SEC Stock-Token Exemption Will Likely Let Companies Opt Out, Securitize's Brett Redfearn Says

The Securitize president, who ran the SEC’s trading and markets division, expects public companies to get a window to object before third parties tokenize their shares.

Brett Redfearn, president of Securitize and director of the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets from 2017 to 2020

Posted September 14, 2026 at 6:53 pm EST.

Brett Redfearn, president of Securitize and director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets from 2017 to 2020, expects the agency’s delayed exemption for tokenized stocks to let public companies object before someone else puts their shares onchain.

“I believe that the innovation exemption is likely going to do something akin to an issuer opt-out,” Redfearn said on Unchained in an interview recorded Sept. 10. Under the design he described, a firm that wants to tokenize a company’s stock would first have to notify the company, which would then get “a certain period of time, I don’t know, 30 days or something, to, like, say yay or nay.” A company that says no would keep its stock off the platform. For one that stays silent, he said, “if they don’t respond, people are gonna go ahead.”

The SEC has not published the exemption, which it delayed in May and again in August.