This post is part of a series on how everyday investors, especially those in the United States, can understand tokenized stocks.*
Paul Atkins was sworn in as the 34th Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 21, 2025. Fast forward nearly a year and you could find Atkins speaking at a large, annual blockchain conference.
Atkins spoke alongside his SEC colleague Hester Peirce. Among the topics he and Peirce covered?
"An innovation exemption to facilitate limited trading of certain tokenized securities on novel platforms with an eye toward developing a long-term regulatory framework" - Chair Atkins
That sentence is far shy of plain language. You might call it word salad. I would struggle to make sense of it had I not, for the last year, paid attention to Atkins's speeches, congressional testimony, TV show appearances, and more. Fortunately, you don't need to wade through a year of SEC Chair activities to understand. Instead, read on to learn about the US regulatory landscape of tokenized stocks as of February 2026.
The regulatory status of tokenized stocks is not specifically defined
As of February 2026, there are no laws or rules specific to answering the questions that tokenized stocks present, at least from a consumer view.
Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, and Remora Markets are three companies that do tokenized stock issuance. If you are in the United States and go to their product pages for tokenized stocks, you will be met with messages that these tokenized stocks are not available in the United States.
If you listen to Atkins when he's asked about tokenization and tokenized securities, which include tokenized stocks, you will hear that "tokenized securities are and will continue to be securities." A January 28, 2026 "Statement on Tokenized Securities" from the SEC's Divisions of Corporation Finance, Investment Management, and Trading and Markets said as much. This would lead a would-be purchaser to think the questions are straightforward and settled. They are not.
If you turn to media organizations, you might see taglines like, "SEC's Paul Atkins touts 'tokenization' as key to modernizing US markets." In the referenced interview, he expressed concern about the SEC being "behind" the market on innovations.
And you could say the market has already moved ahead with the innovation. If you open a self-custody wallet on the Solana network, you might find some of these very tokenized stocks in asset lists. This is neither legal nor financial advice, but you will even be able to purchase them. That is to say they are extremely unlikely to have built-in prohibitions against US persons deciding to purchase them of their own volition. It is hard to imagine that people at any of the tokenized stock issuers, people running decentralized finance exchanges or aggregators that make their purchase and sale possible, or staff at the SEC do not know this.
These realities are perhaps conflicting and at least confusing. Again, as of February 2026, there are no laws or rules specific to answering the questions that tokenized stocks present from a consumer's perspective.
Consumers should be cautious
At this time, it's not possible to simply and generally say what's permissible, prudent, or protected for an individual who wants to buy a tokenized stock. In such situations, common advice is to be cautious. What this means is, unfortunately, a matter for each individual and their advisors to decide. It is not one I can deliver for a general audience.
A common criticism of the SEC from 2021-2024 was that it was doing "regulation by enforcement." That is, instead of going through the process of providing specific rules and clarity with respect to regulations, the SEC brought lawsuits and levied fines to set the rules of the road. This is no longer a criticism of the SEC.
I am increasingly settling on a different criticism of the current SEC approach. I call it "regulation by implication." In short, "individual" or "staff" views from the SEC and its "Project Crypto" are giving private actors an implication that carries the weight of regulation. But it is not regulation. All of these statements are non-binding, non-specific, unclear. My full write-up on this topic will be here by the end of February.
Stablecoins prior to 2025, and the blockchain industry more broadly, proved that American consumers and American businesses will explore and use good technologies. And no less than the Chair of the SEC has said tokenization is good technology.
The SEC is not so clearly at fault. Congress, likely Congress alone, could make stablecoin-style protections clear for tokenized stocks. Congress could do this even for an innovation exemption period. That said, if "tokenized securities are securities," it should be true that the SEC has what it needs to provide more true, on-the-books regulatory clarity.
But until then, and maybe even after, consumers should be cautious. The interplay of existing law and regulation, new ownership technology (read about self-custody here), and new asset technology leaves questions unanswered, for a time.
Legislation or regulation would make things more clear for consumers
Stablecoins are another type of tokenized asset. Before the passage of the GENIUS Act in the summer of 2025, there was no specific US law and limited regulatory rulemaking specific to stablecoins. But with its passage, consumers received some bedrock assurances about how the law would protect them from mismanagement, unnecessarily risky structures, or bad actors in the case of these tokenized dollars:
- –Requirements and prohibitions around quantity, use, and disclosure of reserves the issuer holds to back the stability of the stablecoin
- –Protections in the case that an issuer declares bankruptcy
- –Clear lines of regulatory oversight of issuers
These protections are expected to go into proper effect within the next year, as regulators formalize final rules.
In many cases, the structures of stablecoins and tokenized stocks are similar. Take any of the current tokenized stocks from Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, or Remora Markets. Compare this to the USDC stablecoin from Circle. All four take an asset that is not on a blockchain network and put it on a blockchain network so it can benefit from 24/7 trade and transfer, real-time settlement, and the ability to self-custody in a digital manner. All four also face an enormous challenge: how do they maintain value, or trust and belief, relative to the underlying asset?
The history of stablecoins has made at least one answer quite obvious: one-to-one reserve backing. That is, hold a matching quantity of the underlying asset in a reserve account, not to be used for any purpose other than rooting the value of the tokenized dollar or tokenized stock that lives on a blockchain network.
The GENIUS Act has made this the clear, specific law of the land for stablecoins. Unfortunately, American consumers do not have the same clear, specific protections when it comes to tokenized stocks. Similarly, issuers do not yet have tailor-made pathways to comply with existing securities laws, or specificity as to exactly what does and does not apply.
Conclusion
When Atkins talked about an innovation exemption related to tokenized securities, it's not clear what he meant. It also was non-binding. The reality is that the regulatory landscape, from a consumer perspective, does not have optimal clarity. In turn, the answer to "what's the regulatory status of tokenized stocks" is not a simple, straightforward one in February of 2026. In the meantime, the standard "proceed with caution" probably applies.
*This blog post comes with a disclaimer much like one you might see on a statement or press release on the SEC's website: the views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of Meridian, Meridian Research, or the staffs of either. In addition, please note that nothing written here should be misconstrued as advice of any kind. For example, this is most certainly not legal advice.