Does it matter if the stock you buy comes in the form of a token on a blockchain? We could soon find out as the Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly moving forward on a plan to let companies offer stock trading “on chain.” The plan would be a boon to firms like Coinbase and Robinhood, which are raring to expand their crypto offerings, but could also pose a risk to investors, according to major financial companies like Citadel Securities, which are demanding the agency slow-roll the plan.
According to The Information, citing unnamed sources, the SEC is moving quickly to implement the stocks-on-the-blockchain plan as part of the Trump administration’s broader pro-crypto agenda: “The SEC’s effort would provide exemptive relief for blockchain-based trading of stocks, which means some rules governing stock trading wouldn’t apply, the people said. The scope or time limit of the exemption is unclear. The effort would allow trading to begin quickly.”
In practice, this would mean an investor soon could use their Coinbase wallet or Robinhood’s crypto platform to buy tokens of popular stocks like Apple or Netflix, storing them alongside traditional crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Such offerings are not entirely new. Robinhood is already offering them in overseas markets as is Coinbase rival Kraken, whose CEO recently told Fortune that tokenized stocks have proved especially popular in places like South Africa, because the blockchain offerings let investors get access to U.S. equities without paying exorbitant brokerage commissions.
Tokenized stocks offer the same thing as their traditional counterpart: an opportunity for an investor to own a piece of a company, and earn a profit if the value of the stock increases or if the firm pays a dividend. But the mechanics of ownership are not the same. In the case of a conventional stock purchase, the customer puts in a buy order, and the brokerage acquires the stock on their behalf, assigning them full ownership rights. Tokenized stocks, by contrast, entail an additional step in which a brokerage creates a token—registered on a blockchain like Ethereum—that represents a claim on the underlying share or, in some cases, to a fund that owns a basket of shares.
The advantages of tokenizing stocks, say proponents, is a faster process for settling trades. Currently that process can take a day or more, and during intense trading periods, has led to market meltdowns. In 2021, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev published a blog post titled “It’s time for real-time settlement” after a settlement backlog during the peak of COVID-era meme-stock trading created a liquidity crisis for the company.
While blockchain-based trading and settlement would be faster than the existing system, the likes of Citadel Securities—which handles around 35% of retail stock trades in the U.S.—warn it could have a disruptive effect on the market. There is also the question of compliance, and whether tokenized stocks will come with traditional guardrails to prevent money laundering and other illicit activities.
In any case, the launch of tokenized stocks in the U.S. is unlikely to be imminent since, according to The Information, legacy players would likely sue the SEC to force it to engage in a detailed regulatory review rather than simply grant exemptions to existing stock trading rules.