The U.S. cryptocurrency legislation has just been stalled, yet regulatory agencies have taken the lead in opening a door for “on-chain American stocks.”

On September 17, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially released the “Innovation Exemption,” providing temporary and conditional regulatory relief for qualifying tokenized securities trading venues, allowing them to trade part of the U.S. NMS stocks on-chain.

This means that eligible platforms can trade tokenized stocks through on-chain AMMs and liquidity pools in the future, without the need to register according to traditional exchange models. The exemption period lasts for 5 years and also applies to some qualifying liquidity providers.

Just two days earlier, the U.S. Senate had failed to advance the CLARITY Act.

With congressional legislation temporarily stuck, the SEC has opened the path for "stocks to go on-chain."​​​​​​​

First, here’s a summary

• The SEC launches a 5-year "Innovation Exemption," allowing eligible TSVs to conduct partial trading of tokenized U.S. stocks;
• Tokenized stocks must grant holders the same rights as traditional stocks, including dividends, voting rights, etc.;
• Trading platforms must still meet restrictions regarding the number of shares, trading volume, disclosures, and technical security;
• “Synthetic” stock tokens that do not represent actual stock rights are not included in this framework;
• Assets related to RWA, such as ONDO, subsequently strengthened, as the market began to reprice the tokenized stock track.

What exactly has the SEC opened up?

The most significant change in this policy is not that "America allows all stocks to go directly on-chain."

The SEC is targeting a new class of trading venues—Tokenized Securities Venues (TSV).

Eligible TSVs can provide secondary trading of tokenized NMS stocks to investors through licensed automated market makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools.

At the same time, some participants using their own funds to provide liquidity for these pools can also obtain a corresponding "dealer" regulatory exemption.

However, this framework has clear limitations.

Tokenized stocks must represent real NMS stock rights, and holders need to obtain the same dividends, voting rights, liquidation rights, and company information disclosure rights as traditional stocks.

If the underlying stocks stop trading, then the trading of tokenized stocks must also stop.

Therefore, a more accurate definition of this policy should be:

The SEC has provided a controlled experimental path for secondary trading of on-chain securities.

Why is the market paying particular attention?

In the past few years, one of the biggest limitations of RWA has not been technology, but rather whether traditional financial assets can be legally traded once on-chain.

Issuing a token representing U.S. stocks is not difficult.

The real challenges are:

Who can trade? Where will trading occur? Where does liquidity come from? What securities rules must platforms comply with?

This time, the SEC has directly provided a 5-year exemption for trading venues and liquidity providers, effectively allowing the market to operate first and then observe this model through actual trading data.

The SEC has also explicitly stated that this exemption aims to allow regulatory agencies to gather more data on the on-chain securities market and provide a basis for subsequent long-term rulemaking.

This is why the market sees it as a significant change in the RWA regulatory environment.

Why has ONDO become a direct beneficiary?

After the announcement, RWA-related assets quickly gained attention.

Among them, ONDO surged by over 13%, as the market linked it to tokenized U.S. stocks, Treasury bonds, and other businesses. ONDO is already engaged in tokenizing U.S. stocks, ETFs, and U.S. Treasury bond products, so this SEC policy change has a strong correlation with its core business direction.

However, it is essential to note:

The SEC's exemption does not equal direct approval for ONDO, nor does it mean ONDO's products automatically receive regulatory permission.

The market is trading on the expectations brought by changes in the policy environment.

If more compliant platforms can engage in secondary trading of tokenized securities in the U.S. in the future, the potential trading volume and liquidity in the RWA market could further expand.

How does this policy differ from the CLARITY Act?

The two represent fundamentally different paths.

The CLARITY Act attempts to establish a more complete digital asset market structure and regulatory boundaries at the congressional level, but recent procedural votes failed to advance.

The SEC's Innovation Exemption is much more specific:

Instead of awaiting complete legislation, it first conducts regulatory experiments on a clear market scenario.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has also stated that this measure aims to push the U.S. capital market into the digital stage within the existing statutory authority while openly soliciting market opinions.

Thus, in the short term, there may be a new approach to U.S. Crypto regulation:

As Congressional legislation proceeds slowly, regulatory agencies push certain businesses to be established through exemptions, pilot programs, and rule adjustments.

What truly deserves observation is whether "U.S. stocks can go on-chain" and generate real trading

The biggest variable currently is not the policy itself, but whether real capital will enter after the policy.

If more stocks, ETFs, and other securities go on-chain in the future, forming sustained secondary trading volume, then the narrative of RWA could shift from “tokenizing assets” to:

Making the traditional financial market itself a part of the on-chain market.

But currently, we are still in the first phase.

This exemption has a clear 5-year deadline, limitations on the number of underlying assets and trading volume, and requires platforms to have licensing mechanisms, public disclosures, and technical security measures.

Therefore, what truly deserves attention next is not how much RWA tokens rise in the short term, but rather three data points:

The size of on-chain tokenized stocks, real secondary trading volume, and the level of participation from traditional financial institutions.

If these three indicators continue to grow, then "stocks going on-chain" will no longer merely be a narrative of the Crypto market but could become a foundational infrastructure experiment underway in the U.S. capital market.

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