The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-awaited rule to begin allowing tokenization of securities — a change that could have profound effects on financial markets — has faced controversial perceptions that it will allow synthetic tokens, but one commissioner has taken the unusual step of releasing statements on the unreleased rule to potentially counter those views.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who had pushed for safe harbors for tokenization long before the new president’s arrival under President Donald Trump, issued a pair of statements on social media site X on Thursday and Friday to clarify what she expects from the soon-to-emerge rule. Their posts suggested that the proposed rule will not pave the way for synthetic tokenized securities: third-party tokenization that references a security but does not carry the equity, voting, and other rights associated with the security.
Peirce, the commissioner behind the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, wrote that she hopes the upcoming rule, now potentially delayed, will be “limited in scope and facilitate trading only in digital representations of the same underlying equity security that an investor could purchase in the secondary market today, not synthetics.”
Peirce reposted to explain what he meant by synthetics, directing people to read the SEC’s January statement on tokenized securities, “which distinguishes tokenized versions of issuer-sponsored stocks and shares that SEC-registered firms hold for their clients from synthetic instruments that provide exposure to stocks.”
The flames had been fanned by Bloomberg News reports this week that predicted the agency was leaning toward including a path for synthetic tokens tradable on decentralized crypto platforms. Peirce said he appreciates the public’s strong interest in the rule “but not the hyperbole” about it.
Peirce did not respond to a request for comment on his posts.
Bloomberg had also predicted the rule could arrive this week, but reported in a later article on Friday that the release was being delayed further.
The resulting rule will represent the most significant step the SEC has taken to date to forge a new regulatory approach to cryptocurrency trading in the US. Chairman Paul Atkins has been saying for months that his agency is ready to release wide-ranging proposals to provide regulatory relief in the crypto space.
He described part of the effort in a March speech at the DC Blockchain Summit, saying the agency was contemplating safe harbors from certain regulatory demands for various crypto activities, including granting startups something like a four-year exemption from registration “to provide developers with a regulatory runway during which they could work toward maturity”; a “fundraising exemption” for certain crypto assets in which “entrepreneurs could raise up to a defined amount (e.g., $75 million) during any 12-month period”; and an “investment contract safe harbor” to prevent certain cryptoassets from being defined as regulated securities, with the safe harbor being activated when the issuer ends all of its management efforts.
Atkins said at the time that Commissioner Peirce’s “fingerprints are all over” the SEC’s rulemaking.
While the SEC, along with its sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has been drafting crypto rules, Atkins and CFTC Chairman Mike Selig have said they are doing so with the understanding that Congress is backing them with the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to make some of the same ideas into permanent law.
“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said in March.
UPDATE (May 22, 2026, 18:53 UTC): Adds delay in publishing the rule.
