The US Nasdaq stock exchange is putting the spotlight on getting SEC approval for its exciting plan to offer tokenized stocks. This news comes straight from Nasdaq’s crypto head, and they’re ready to roll!
“We’ll just move as fast as we can,” said Matt Savarese, head of digital assets strategy at Nasdaq, during his chat with CNBC on Thursday about the SEC possibly giving the green light this year.
“We really have to pay attention to the public comments and make sure we address the SEC’s questions as they come up,” Savarese explained. “Our goal is to work with them efficiently,” he added.
Savarese assures Nasdaq isn’t “upending the system”
Nasdaq’s proposal, submitted on September 8, aims to allow investors to buy and sell stock tokens—essentially digital versions of shares from publicly traded companies—on the exchange.
When asked if he foresees other major exchanges following this lead, Savarese made it clear that Nasdaq isn’t trying to turn everything upside down. “We’re not about upending the system; we want everyone to join the journey and make tokenization more mainstream,” he said.
“We want to approach this in a way that’s responsible and led by investors, all while sticking to SEC rules,” he emphasized.
Interestingly, just last month, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev mentioned that tokenization might “eventually eat the whole financial system.”
The crypto scene has mixed feelings about tokenized equities
Savarese also noted that Nasdaq wants to lead in innovation, recalling how they were the pioneers in shifting markets from paper trading to electronic systems.
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Tokenizing stocks has been a hot topic in the crypto world this year.
On September 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz announced that his company became the first Nasdaq-listed firm to tokenize its equity on a major blockchain, launching on the Solana network.
The buzz around tokenized equities isn’t without its skeptics, though. On October 1, Rob Hadick from the crypto venture firm Dragonfly told Cointelegraph that while tokenized equities could greatly benefit traditional markets, they might not be the game-changer for the crypto scene that many hope.
Hadick noted that if tokenized stocks rely on layer-2 networks, it may create “leakage” of value that doesn’t flow back into Ethereum or the wider crypto ecosystem as much as anticipated.
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