Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Crypto Task Force intensified studies on how public blockchain technology can support the issuance and trading of tokenized securities.
All three meetings resulted in the suggestion of the concept of a regulatory sandbox.
Additionally, they asked for authorization for a new “ATS-Digital” venue where firms can list digital asset investment contracts alongside commodity-style tokens.
The exchange operator also asked regulators to create a joint safe harbor with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for assets whose status is uncertain.
Nasdaq added that tokenization should not weaken national market system protections and that any move toward atomic settlement must balance liquidity and operational risk.
The company’s agenda calls for safe harbor relief that explicitly factors in decentralized finance mechanics and “credible neutrality,” plus tools to calibrate rules across primary offerings and on-chain secondary trading.
Etherealize and policy firm MetaLeX focused on back-office infrastructure, telling the Task Force that legacy transfer agent regulations force issuers to keep parallel off-chain ledgers and negate blockchain efficiencies.
A transfer agent is a financial institution acting as a record-keeper for a company’s shareholders.
They also urged a pilot to test smart contract equivalents for corporate actions such as dividend distribution and shareholder voting.
Across the meetings, industry participants pressed for clear taxonomy, modular rulebooks, and phased pilots.
Furthermore, each called for technology-specific tweaks, but none challenged the SEC’s core investor-protection mandate.
The Task Force staff took the materials under advisement, indicating that future rule proposals could weigh sandbox models, dedicated trading venues, and updated transfer agent obligations.
