Wall Street is trying to take back the right to define “tokenized stocks.”
The Securities Transfer Association (STA) has just sent a letter to the SEC. Its core demand boils down to one sentence: tokenized stock rules must distinguish between “issuer authorization” and “third-party synthesis,” and the former should enjoy exemptions and pilot priority.
The letter’s impact lies in three points:
1. It directly targets a weakness of the third-party model: investors don’t receive shareholder rights, but rather a bundled exposure combining platform credit + custody risk + counterparty risk, with the legal relationship not being directly tied to the issuer;
2. It requires platforms to obtain the issuer’s written consent before packaging a product as “tokenized stock of a certain listed company,” which effectively cuts the legs out from under existing synthetic pathways;
3. It pushes DTCC and transfer agents to upgrade the DRS direct registration system, paving the way for an “on-chain native shareholder registry.”
In the tokenized stocks market currently worth about $2 billion, the leading players are Ondo and Kraken xStocks’ third-party synthesis structure. If the SEC adopts the STA’s recommendations, these products would either be forced back to seek authorization, or be pushed into the regulatory gray zone—requiring a rewrite of valuation logic.
Signals to watch: the SEC has not yet issued any official rules, suggesting the battleground window is still open. But traditional market infrastructure providers (transfer agents, DTCC) have already come to the table proactively—this is often the final stretch before rules are finalized.
For on-chain players, two lines must be watched:
- RWA protocols with real issuer cooperation, where the moat is amplified by policy;
- xStocks-type products using a purely synthetic route, where liquidity may still hold up in the short term, but mid-term valuations will need a discount.
In the second half of tokenized stocks, the deciding factor isn’t TVL—it’s the issuer’s signature.
#RWA #代币化股票 #SEC $ONDO