Morning Minute: The SEC Plans Rules for Tokenized Stocks

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mostly red, HYPE leads; BTC at $63.4k
• Bitcoin spot trading volume falls to 7-year low
• Goldman Sachs buys a BTC income ETF with $2.25B NEOS deal
• Solana came close to going down after routing bug
• Hyperliquid adds new function to handle tokenized stock functions like splits, dividends

🏛️ The SEC Moves to Bless the Onchain Stock Market Without Congress

The SEC is preparing to do on its own what Congress couldn’t.

Per Bloomberg, the SEC will roll out two crypto initiatives in the coming days while the CLARITY Act sits stalled until at least September. First, a Friday open meeting to propose “Regulation Crypto,” a framework letting projects raise capital through token sales without full securities registration. Second, and bigger for onchain markets, an “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, with details possibly dropping Friday.

The exemption would let tokenized versions of stocks like Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia trade on blockchains around the clock, in fractional sizes, with near-instant settlement. The tokens typically track a stock’s economic exposure but carry no voting or dividend rights (though some protocols are working on solving the voting and dividend rights), which is what justifies the lighter regulatory treatment. It’s the core of Chair Paul Atkins’ “Project Crypto” agenda.