The American regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this week presented a long-awaited proposal to modernize rules for transfer agents — key intermediaries that maintain shareholder registries. At the heart of the initiative is the official recognition of blockchain technology as a legitimate basis for storing records of securities ownership. This is not just a technical amendment, but a signal that the infrastructure of traditional capital markets is beginning to catch up with the digital era.
The current rules governing the activities of transfer agents have remained virtually unchanged since the early 1980s. Since then, the market has moved far ahead, adopting electronic communications and distributed ledgers. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins emphasized that the new rules aim to close the gap between technological progress and the outdated regulatory framework. The essence of the proposal is to allow the use of blockchain for maintaining the official shareholder registry, as well as to require agents to disclose information about tokenized assets and the networks on which they are hosted.
The key point here is the legal force of the token. The proposed changes clarify that a digital asset can be considered the share itself, rather than merely its wrapper, only if it is directly linked to the official registry. This closes the legal uncertainty that has been holding back the tokenization of real-world assets. Incidentally, giants such as Securitize, Computershare, and Equiniti are already actively working in this direction, and the new regulation will create clear rules of the game for them.
Interestingly, in parallel, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) closed a high-profile case against trader John Patrick Gorman III. He deleted WhatsApp correspondence that the regulator had required to be preserved, and will now pay a fine of $90,000 — with a lifetime ban on such actions. This case vividly illustrates the main problem: regulators are forced to rely on the good faith of market participants when it comes to record-keeping. And it is precisely this vulnerability that the transition to an immutable, publicly accessible blockchain registry is intended to eliminate.
My comment: The SEC initiative is not just a step toward legalizing crypto infrastructure, but an attempt to strengthen trust in the very system of ownership record-keeping. If DLT registries become the standard, we will see a significant acceleration in the equity tokenization segment, which could radically change the liquidity and accessibility of traditional markets.