The head of the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets laid out two structural priorities on Wednesday: building a regulatory framework to list and trade tokenized securities on existing market infrastructure, and harmonizing SEC rules with those of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Jamie Selway, Director of the Division of Trading and Markets, delivered the remarks at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange & Fintech Conference in New York on June 4. The remarks, posted to SEC.gov, confirm that the Division has been executing on two discrete workstreams under Chairman Paul Atkins's direction since January.
Selway said the Division is developing a framework to list and trade tokenized securities with "innovation without arbitrage" as its guiding principle. The phrase is intended to prevent market participants from using blockchain-based listings to escape obligations that apply to traditionally traded instruments.
Commissioner Hester Peirce clarified in May that a contemplated innovation exemption would cover only issuer-sponsored digital representations of existing equities, not synthetic instruments. Selway's June 4 remarks represent the Division's operational counterpart: staff-level work on the mechanics of how such instruments would actually list and trade.
