SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Says Crypto Rules Will Exclude Synthetic Securities Tokenization

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, oversees public-company disclosures and securities markets. Tokenized securities record rights to assets such as stocks on a blockchain, potentially accelerating settlement and reducing intermediaries. Commissioner Hester Peirce argues that complex rules can obscure important information. She favors simpler disclosures and limited exemptions to test whether existing securities laws can accommodate new structures.

Peirce proposed an "innovation exemption" at an SEC Investor Advisory Committee meeting on March 12, 2026. Bloomberg reported on May 18 that the SEC was developing a framework for trading tokenized stocks. On May 21, she tempered expectations further, saying the exemption would apply only to digital representations of the same underlying shares and would exclude synthetic tokens. Tokenized stocks on blockchains were worth about $1.48 billion at the time.