The American securities market is on the verge of a tectonic shift. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday presented a long-awaited package of amendments that could legalize the use of blockchain for maintaining official registries of stock owners. This is not just a technical update — it is a direct signal that the regulator is finally ready to recognize distributed ledgers as a full-fledged alternative to traditional infrastructure.
The essence of the proposal is to modernize rules for transfer agents — those "shadow" companies that have remained unnoticed for decades, yet manage the stock market's key document: the list of share holders. Dividends, corporate actions, and, critically, the legal force of ownership transfers depend on their records.
The current rules have not been updated since the early 1980s. The market has long been operating differently: electronic communications, asset tokenization, and digital payments have become commonplace, while the rules remain frozen in the last century. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins emphasizes that the document has been in preparation for over a decade and is intended to finally catch up with reality by bringing blockchain technologies into the legal framework.
The key point is the wording that determines whether a token is the share itself or merely its digital wrapper. The transfer will have legal force only when the blockchain is directly linked to the official registry. Until now, this gap between tokenization and actual ownership has only widened, creating a zone of legal uncertainty for investors and issuers.
Notably, pioneers in this field — Securitize, Computershare, and Equiniti — are already working on integration. The new rules will require transfer agents to disclose which securities they tokenize and in which networks they place the tokens, adding transparency to the process.
The flip side of the coin
Interestingly, on the same day, the CFTC closed a case against trader John Patrick Gorman III, who deleted WhatsApp correspondence that the regulator had ordered to be preserved. The $90,000 fine is a reminder of how fragile a system that relies on the goodwill of participants truly is. It is precisely this weakness that a public, immutable blockchain registry is intended to eliminate.
My view: This SEC proposal is not just a bureaucratic formality, but a crucial step toward institutional recognition of DLT as foundational capital market infrastructure. If the rules are adopted, we will witness accelerated tokenization of traditional assets, which will inevitably strengthen the convergence between TradFi and DeFi. However, one should not expect an immediate effect — regulatory delays and resistance from outdated infrastructure could drag the process out for years.