Last week, SEC chairman Paul Atkins said tokenization will ultimately handle not just equities trading but proxy voting, dividend payments and shareholder communications. The SEC will provide “compliant pathways” for market participants to take advantage of these new options.
Atkins believes the entire financial market could fully migrate onchain within two years. Regulators will have to decide whether stocks confer the same benefits/protections regardless of the rails they travel on, or if investors must accept a greater level of risk to enjoy greater freedom of movement.
foxbusiness.com/video/63859021…
On the whole, the US gov’t has signalled it isn’t likely to hold DeFi developers liable for how their platforms are used. So it could be left to DeFi users to ensure they’re not buying tokenized equities that contain no legal relation to the equity in question.
The benefits of tokenization are obvious: instant settlement, lower fees, 24/7 trading, etc. But there are also potential pitfalls, many of which regulators are only starting to contemplate.
For instance, spreading trades across disconnected DeFi platforms with a lack of uniform post-trade reporting could threaten price discovery. Direct P2P transfers and outsized leverage could inject additional uncertainty.
Private companies could choose to skip the IPO process entirely and just issue tokenized shares. This will bypass pre-listing financial proctology exams and post-listing quarterly reporting, but it will also lead to sketchier companies hiding skeletons that IPO scrutiny might have exposed.
The US deregulatory push will put pressure on other jurisdictions to follow suit. But laissez-faire comes at a cost. Recall that Canadian banks fared better than U.S. banks in 2008 because of tighter rules that limited the kind of freewheeling dealmaking that U.S. banks engaged in.
Technology generally progresses faster than law/regulations can keep up. Regulators now seem determined to make up for their lack of progress on this front over the past few years by moving as fast as they can. I welcome this revolution but hope we aren’t getting out ahead of our skis.
Calvin Ayre
Dic 11, 2025
https://x.com/i/status/1999084543211397387
https://t.me/CalvinAyre/997
Atkins believes the entire financial market could fully migrate onchain within two years. Regulators will have to decide whether stocks confer the same benefits/protections regardless of the rails they travel on, or if investors must accept a greater level of risk to enjoy greater freedom of movement.
foxbusiness.com/video/63859021…
On the whole, the US gov’t has signalled it isn’t likely to hold DeFi developers liable for how their platforms are used. So it could be left to DeFi users to ensure they’re not buying tokenized equities that contain no legal relation to the equity in question.
The benefits of tokenization are obvious: instant settlement, lower fees, 24/7 trading, etc. But there are also potential pitfalls, many of which regulators are only starting to contemplate.
For instance, spreading trades across disconnected DeFi platforms with a lack of uniform post-trade reporting could threaten price discovery. Direct P2P transfers and outsized leverage could inject additional uncertainty.
Private companies could choose to skip the IPO process entirely and just issue tokenized shares. This will bypass pre-listing financial proctology exams and post-listing quarterly reporting, but it will also lead to sketchier companies hiding skeletons that IPO scrutiny might have exposed.
The US deregulatory push will put pressure on other jurisdictions to follow suit. But laissez-faire comes at a cost. Recall that Canadian banks fared better than U.S. banks in 2008 because of tighter rules that limited the kind of freewheeling dealmaking that U.S. banks engaged in.
Technology generally progresses faster than law/regulations can keep up. Regulators now seem determined to make up for their lack of progress on this front over the past few years by moving as fast as they can. I welcome this revolution but hope we aren’t getting out ahead of our skis.
Calvin Ayre
Dic 11, 2025
https://x.com/i/status/1999084543211397387
https://t.me/CalvinAyre/997
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