U.S. House weighs tokenized securities rules as SEC, Clarity Act advance

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on tokenized securities and blockchain stock trading, with broad agreement that tokenized securities should keep the same core SEC-style guardrails as traditional markets. Chair French Hill said technology must not weaken oversight, while Ranking member Maxine Waters flagged risks tied to tokenized securities: anonymous wallets obscuring foreign ownership, potential KYC/AML gaps, and DeFi governance concerns. SEC Chair Paul Atkins signaled formal rulemaking for tokenized securities and hinted at an “innovation exemption” to allow testing before full registration requirements. Lawmakers also pointed to the Senate’s Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (“Clarity Act”) as the likely legal framework. Industry witnesses argued tokenized securities could improve efficiency by reducing intermediaries and urged regulators to distinguish intermediary entities from user-directed infrastructure, especially where custody, control, and discretion differ. As large asset managers expand tokenization plans and BlackRock’s Larry Fink called it “updating the plumbing” of finance, Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s involvement, citing alleged personal conflicts. For crypto traders, this hearing is a market-structure/regulatory catalyst: it supports a path toward clearer tokenized securities rules, but the political friction could slow implementation, keeping near-term sentiment mixed and headline-driven.