On Sept. 17, 2026 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a temporary, conditional “Innovation Exemption” that lets eligible Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) offer limited trading of tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks on certain on-chain venues without being treated as a registered securities exchange under the Exchange Act in the ordinary way.
Per an SEC commissioner statement dated the same day, relief covers permissioned trading via automated market makers and liquidity pools. Conditions cited include public notice, transaction transparency, stoppage coordination with the underlying listing market, books and records, and technology safeguards. The design includes symbol limits and volume caps calibrated by limit-up/limit-down tiers. USD-denominated transaction data — price, size, time, pool address, end-of-day pool size, daily volume — is to be published at regular intervals for monitoring and study.
The order also provides tailored conditional relief from the “dealer” definition for certain liquidity providers that contribute proprietary capital under disclosure and recordkeeping conditions. Reporting on the order describes additional operational constraints: tokens must carry the economic and governance rights of the equivalent conventional shares (not pure synthetics); when a TSV seeks to tokenize shares of a company it does not control it must give the issuer written notice and wait 30 days, and an issuer objection bars listing; smart contracts must be auditable and public on a public permissionless ledger; trading must halt when the primary listing exchange halts the underlying stock.
The exemption is temporary — five years from publication in the accounts of the order — and the Commission is soliciting public comment. SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins framed the step as using existing statutory authority after Congress did not advance the broader Digital Asset Market Clarity Act; he said durable formal rulemaking would still be needed for on-chain markets to remain a viable pathway.
Context: the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act on cloture days earlier (reported 49–50, short of 60). The Innovation Exemption is an administrative, scoped path — not a statute — and does not by itself set permanent market-structure law.
Primary: SEC statement on the Innovation Exemption, Sept. 17, 2026 (sec.gov). Secondary summaries: Quartz / industry reporting on the same order.
U.S. SEC statement on the Innovation Exemption (Sept. 17, 2026)