How the SEC Could Clear the Way for 24/7 Stock Trading — Barrons.com

By Joe LightFor investors in the U.S., 24/7 stock trading could soon become a reality.The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to release cryptocurrency-related proposals soon. An open meeting where the commission was set to release the proposals was scheduled for Friday, but the SEC canceled late Thursday afternoon.An SEC spokesperson in a statement said the meeting would be moved "due to an unforeseen scheduling issue."The SEC proposals were expected to include ones that would make it easier for crypto firms to raise money through token sales without meeting all the typical requirements of traditional public offerings. That proposed rule cleared a review by the White House Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday, though there's likely to be a public comment period and revisions before final approval.Some analysts also expected the SEC to use the meeting to unveil details of another highly anticipated proposal, which Chairman Paul Atkins has called the "innovation exemption." The exemption would allow firms to expand the trading of real-world assets like stocks to the blockchain.In a speech in April, Atkins said the agency was on the cusp of releasing the exemption, which he said would "provide market participants with a cabined framework to begin facilitating the trading of tokenized securities on-chain in a compliant fashion."The SEC held off on issuing the crypto rules to give Congress time to reach an agreement on the so-called Clarity Act, a bill that would put most crypto trading outside the purview of the SEC. The agreement didn't happen. The Senate failed to take a vote on the bill before its August recess, lowering its chances of passing this year.So now, many executives in the crypto industry expect that the agency will do what it can to give them regulatory relief using its existing legal authorities.Crypto firms have already dabbled in tokenized stocks, though they're prevented from offering them to U.S. investors except in limited cases.Proponents of stock tokenization say it will bring many benefits of the blockchain to traditional markets. A traditional stock trade right now settles one business day after it's executed, whereas a tokenized trade could settle instantly. That — combined with the ability to move stablecoins instantly over blockchains — removes some of the hurdles that make 24/7 stock trading difficult to pull off today.The exemption could also be a catalyst for the tokens of "decentralized finance" protocols that could host tokenized stock trading, wrote analysts for Compass Point Research & Trading in a note this week.The analysts pointed to Hyperliquid, and its "HYPE" token," as one case in point. That exchange is focused on futures, rather than equities. Despite Bitcoin's fall this year, the HYPE token has more than doubled after the platform saw an explosion in after-hours trading in oil and gold around Iran War developments."We could see other crypto prices rerate if DeFi earnings quality improves after the SEC's innovation exemption is released," the analysts wrote.When the proposal gets released, a key question will be how large the SEC allows the pilots to be.Some crypto firms have wanted the SEC to allow them to tokenize the stocks of companies whether or not the companies themselves give their approval. That would let the markets grow rapidly but give the firms limited say in where their stock is traded. Bloomberg News this week reported that the SEC could instead propose allowing issuers to object to a tokenized listing.SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who leads the agency's crypto task force, wrote in a May post on X that she expected the innovation exemption to be "limited in scope."It's unclear for how long the proposals are delayed. The spokesperson only said the meeting would take place at "a later date." Some advocates of the Clarity Act have worried that the SEC moving on its own would take the pressure off Congress to pass a bill, killing the pro-crypto legislation for good."The SEC is committed to delivering on the President's agenda to bring certainty to the crypto space," the SEC spokesperson said.Write to Joe Light at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.