SEC Chairman Expressed Supportive Attitude Towards Tokenized Stocks

Jay Clayton, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took a clear stand in supporting decentralized financial assets in a webinar with the Chamber of Digital Commerce, “Two Sides of the American Coin: Innovation & Regulation of Digital Assets”, although the regulatory body didn’t seem to advocate his idea in recent activities.  

 In the webinar, Clayton said, “It may very well be the case that [...stocks] all become tokenized.” Tokenized stocks can be protected under the DeFi umbrella; similarly, others may include decentralized stablecoins and non-custodial loans.

 “One of the problems that we had, was we got off on the wrong foot in this innovation,” said Clayton. “There was the theory that, because it was so efficient because it could have so much promise, we could toss aside some of those principles of responsibility and transparency. I think now three years later, four years later, we are in a much better spot.”

“We're willing to try that; our door is wide open. If you want to show how to tokenize the ETF product in a way that adds efficiency, we want to meet with you, we want to facilitate that,” Clayton even added.

 However, SEC’s recent actions suggest a stark contrast to his attitude.

 In July, the SEC and CFTC ( Commodity Futures Trading Commission) fined Abra, a  company offering tokenized stocks, for $150,000. The SEC alleged that Abra was providing tokenized stocks as “security-based swaps” to unregistered individual investors. 

 The SEC also denied several attempts for Bitcoin ETFs, stating that Bitcoin's price can be easily manipulated.