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Blockchain Association on April 13 submitted a letter to SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and the agency's Crypto Task Force backing Coinbase's argument that third-party tokenization of publicly traded securities should not need issuer approval. The letter, posted on the SEC's Crypto Task Force input page, also urged the commission to test tokenized securities activity through a time- and volume-limited "innovation exemption."
What Coinbase asked for
The letter expressly supported Coinbase's March 31 submission, which argued that requiring issuer consent for third-party tokenization would be inconsistent with how secondary market activity already works under securities law. Coinbase also said the SEC's own recent handling of tokenized securities infrastructure pointed in the same direction.
The SEC's own signals
The SEC has been laying out its thinking since January. In a staff statement on tokenized securities, the agency said federal securities laws apply regardless of whether a security is recorded on-chain or off-chain, and drew a line between issuer-sponsored and third-party-sponsored tokenization. Both Coinbase and Blockchain Association pointed to two recent precedents: the SEC's March 18 approval of Nasdaq's proposal to support tokenized securities trading, and a December 11 no-action position for a DTC tokenization pilot.
Innovation exemption gaining traction inside the SEC
Chairman Paul Atkins referred in February to a possible temporary innovation exemption with trading volume limits. On the same day as the Blockchain Association letter, SEC Trading and Markets Director Jamie Selway said his division was working on such a recommendation. That is not a rule yet, but it means the idea is being developed internally, not just proposed from outside.
What has actually changed
Nothing binding. The SEC has another formal submission on the record. No new permission, prohibition, or compliance obligation has been adopted. For issuers, trading venues, tokenization platforms, and investors, this is still the comment-and-discussion phase. But the direction is getting clearer: both industry and parts of the SEC itself are moving toward a framework where third parties can tokenize listed securities without issuer sign-off, under defined limits.
