Overview
- The SEC issued the five-year Innovation Exemption on Sept. 17, 2026, allowing qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market makers under tight conditions.
- Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Citizens singled out Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle as likely early beneficiaries because of Coinbase’s custody and Tokenize infrastructure, Robinhood’s distribution and Circle’s USDC settlement role.
- Coinbase says voting rights for its tokenized shares are coming soon, a change that would help meet the SEC’s requirement that tokens preserve dividends and voting, but the company must also adapt its central limit order book infrastructure to work with AMM-based venues.
- Robinhood’s existing offshore stock tokens are structured as tokenized debt and lack legal ownership and voting rights, so the firm must redesign those products to qualify for U.S. trading and some analysts predict a possible U.S. launch as early as 2027.
- Market researchers including TD Cowen warn adoption may be modest at first because many issuers show little interest, onchain liquidity can be thin as shown by Figure’s trading split, and crypto traders currently favor perpetual futures over spot tokenized shares.