SEC Officials Talk Tokenization
On May 12, 2025, SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins and Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda gave speeches at the crypto task force roundtable on tokenization.
Chair Atkins Speech
Techology is advancing such that securities are increasingly being moved from traditional databases (ledgers with the transfer agent, etc..) to blockchain based ledger systems. Atkins likens this change to the historical music industry which morphed from analog vinyl records to cassettes to digital software. The change in the music industry allowed streaming and an entirely new system of developing and listening to music.
Atkins notes that just as digitization revolutionized the music industry, the digitization (i.e. tokenization) of securities has the potential to “remodel aspects of the securities market by enabling entirely new methods of issuing, trading, owning, and using securities.” For example, the new technology will make the issuance of dividends (especially recurring dividends) automatic, allow for the trading of previously illiquid assets, and allow for the creation of new
SEC Will Not Meet Deadline to Remove Ban on General Solicitation and Advertising in Private Offerings and Hedge Funds
The SEC won’t make the 90-day deadline to draft rules and enact Title II of the JOBS Act eliminating the ban on advertising and general solicitation for private placements and allowing advertising by hedge funds, Mary Schapiro, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman told a U.S. House oversight panel on June 27, 2012. In prepared testimony, Mary Schapiro told a U.S. House oversight panel that certain rule writing deadlines imposed by the JOBS Act “are not achievable.”
Title II of the JOBS Act provides that, within 90 days of the passage of the JOBS Act (i.e. July 5, 2012), the SEC will amend Section 4(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Regulation D promulgated there under, to eliminate the prohibition on general solicitation and general advertising in a Rule 506 offering, so long as all purchasers in such offering are accredited investors. “The 90-day deadline does not provide a realistic timeframe for the drafting of the new rule, the preparation
