The SEC's paused tokenized stock exemption.

This week the SEC pulled a rule it had called imminent. The exemption would have let US firms issue and trade tokenized stocks, blockchain versions of real shares, without the full registration every stock exchange follows.

The pushback came from the exchanges. Nasdaq, NYSE, and Cboe argued it would create a second venue for the same stock under lighter rules. If Apple trades on Nasdaq under one rulebook and a tokenized Apple trades on a chain under another, the prices drift apart, and the retail order gets filled on the worse side.

Tokenizing a stock is the easy part. Wiring it into the surveillance and pricing rules that protect the people trading it is what decides whether it ships.