For years, “tokenized securities” sounded like a parallel universe. A cleaner, faster market running outside the pipes of traditional finance.
The SEC just signaled something very different: tokenization is not being welcomed as a replacement for the existing market structure. It is being permitted inside it, under incumbent rules, with a stopwatch running.
On December 11, 2025, the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets staff issued a no-action letter to The Depository Trust Company (DTC), the DTCC subsidiary that sits at the center of U.S. post-trade settlement. The relief gives DTC a three-year window to operate a preliminary, voluntary tokenization service under defined conditions.
What the SEC actually allowed, and why it matters?
A no-action letter is not a new law. It is the SEC staff saying, “Based on what you described, we do not intend to recommend enforcement action.” In practice, it is often how regulators let markets test new plumbing without rewriting the entire rulebook first. In this case, the signal is bigger than the paperwork. The SEC staff letter and the accompanying SEC statement frame tokenization as a market infrastructure experiment led by the entity that already maintains the industry’s core ledger of entitlements. That distinction matters.
