The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday granted a five-year exemption allowing blockchain platforms to operate automated market makers for tokenized National Market System stocks without registering as traditional exchanges.
Under the order, Tokenized Securities Venues can list fractional U.S. shares on-chain with round-the-clock trading. The exemption is temporary and conditional, designed to provide a regulated sandbox for blockchain-based equity markets.
Concurrently, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission eased rules for software providers connecting users with regulated derivatives markets. Qualifying firms can now avoid introducing broker registration if their technology remains passive—defined as not involving custody, trading signals, or discretionary order execution. The move gives crypto trading applications more flexibility to build around regulated derivatives offerings without incurring full introducing broker compliance.
Both regulators issued these exemptions within hours of each other Thursday, following stalled progress on crypto legislation in the U.S. Senate. The market structure bill, known as the CLARITY Act, failed to advance. With federal legislation blocked, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and the CFTC chairman invoked existing authorities to establish regulatory pathways for digital assets.
In a separate development, financial data giant S&P Global is acquiring blockchain security company OpenZeppelin. S&P Global, which holds a $150 billion market capitalization, seeks OpenZeppelin's expertise for its risk assessment products. OpenZeppelin has provided smart contract security tools and auditing services since 2015, protecting widely used on-chain codebases across the decentralized finance ecosystem. The acquisition integrates on-chain security capabilities directly into traditional financial infrastructure.
