WASHINGTON (Sept. 17, 2026) — The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday issued a temporary “Innovation Exemption” meant to clear a path for trading venues to list and trade tokenized versions of certain publicly traded U.S. stocks — without first registering as traditional exchanges.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins cast the move as bringing capital markets “into the digital age” under existing statutory authority. The relief is a five-year, conditional exemption for so-called tokenized securities venues (TSVs), including automated market-maker and liquidity-pool models, and takes effect immediately as an interim measure while the agency eyes longer-term rulemaking.

Same rights — or no deal

Two conditions are doing the political work. Token holders must keep the same rights as traditional shareholders, including dividends and voting. And issuers get a veto: venues must give a company 30 days’ notice before tokenizing its shares; if the issuer objects, that tokenized listing cannot proceed.

Synthetic “exposure” tokens that do not convey real ownership are outside the exemption — a direct shot at offshore products that critics say dilute the company–shareholder link.

After Clarity stalled

The order landed two days after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act crypto market-structure bill. Atkins had signaled the SEC would “act decisively” within its own authority; Thursday’s exemption is the follow-through, paired with the agency’s broader “Project Crypto” push and a same-day roundtable track on around-the-clock trading.

Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, and Kraken have experimented with tokenized equities offshore; U.S. retail still lacks a fully cleared onshore path. Volume caps and permissioned venue rules are built in to limit thin-market blowups — but the bigger fight will be whether temporary staff exemptions harden into durable rules, or get yanked by a future commission.

Sources: SEC press release 2026-90 (Innovation Exemption for tokenized NMS stock); SEC Chair Paul Atkins statement; CNBC; CoinDesk.