In a speech at the Economic Club of Washington, DC, on April 21, SEC Chair Paul Atkins described his agency’s near-term agenda. The plans included an exemption that would give market participants the limited ability to trade tokenized securities on chain as well as a strategy to cut down firms’ disclosure burdens and create a looser IPO process.
On the subject of tokenized securities, or securities that are represented as digital assets on a blockchain, Atkins said the SEC is “on the cusp” of an innovation exemption that would provide a “cabined framework” allowing market participants to facilitate tokenized trading in a compliant manner while the agency works toward a long-term framework.
He has previously stated that he approved of letting traditional financial firms and crypto-native firms experiment with limited trading of certain tokenized securities, including on automated market makers and other decentralized-liquidity venues that allow for trading without a traditional centralized exchange operator. He underscored that investors who prefer intermediaries would still be able to use them.
Atkins’s statements also follow up on a February speech in which he mulled over allowing tokenized security trading on novel platforms, including in decentralized settings, and floated providing temporary relief. In March, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce stated that the agency was working on a tailored exemption.
Atkins also framed the agency’s agenda around what he called an “A-C-T” strategy: advancing regulatory frameworks into the modern era, clarifying jurisdictional lines, and transforming the SEC rulebook by removing requirements that unnecessarily burden markets.
As examples of the new philosophy in practice, he pointed to the SEC-CFTC memorandum of understanding, the new Cross-Border Task Force, reforms to allow ETF share class structures for mutual funds, and the agency’s new fraud-focused enforcement program.
Atkins also touched on his long-running plan to “Make IPOs Great Again,” stating that he instructed SEC staff to evaluate an IPO on-ramp process that would extend the model provided by the JOBS Act. Previously, Atkins stated that he was wary about the current process, which can in some cases kick companies off a year after IPO, and instead said there should be a fixed term of years in place.
He also said he wants to make it easier to let companies register securities in advance (“shelf registration”) and allow firms to freely choose between quarterly or semiannual reporting.
He also touched on the SEC’s broader effort to rationalize disclosure requirements, deliver what he called the minimum dose of regulation with materiality as the agency’s “north star,” and avoid using SEC disclosure rules to indirectly regulate issues better left to the states, including corporate governance.