SEC’s Peirce Signals Openness to Tokenization Dialogue
SINGAPORE — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce said Tuesday the agency is prepared to engage with market participants pursuing tokenization, though she stressed the complexity of aligning blockchain-based instruments with traditional securities.
“We are willing to work with people who want to tokenize, and we encourage them to come talk to us,” Peirce told attendees at the Digital Assets Summit in Singapore.
Tokenized securities are digital representations of ownership rights in assets such as equities or bonds, existing alongside paper certificates and electronic records. Peirce noted that the challenge lies in determining how these different formats of the same security interact with one another.
“Some of the questions are how a tokenized security interfaces with other iterations of that security,” she explained, adding that outcomes depend heavily on the design and structure of the tokenization process.
Tokenization, alongside stablecoins, is one of the most commercially advanced applications of blockchain, with financial institutions increasingly adopting the model to improve liquidity and efficiency.
As of Tuesday, the on-chain tokenization market was valued at $31 billion, according to RWA.xyz, of which $714 million represents tokenized equities. McKinsey forecasts that tokenized assets could scale to $2 trillion in value by 2030.
