Today in crypto, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s tokenization pilot, SEC Chair Paul Atkins offered further clarity on why NFTs generally fall outside securities laws and Ethereum aims to cut bridge times by 98% with a new rule.
SEC approves Nasdaq tokenized trading pilot
The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday approved Nasdaq’s pilot proposal to support the trading of high-volume tokenized versions of stocks and other securities.
Under the pilot, tokenized stocks would trade alongside their traditional counterparts on the same order book, at the same price, with the same ticker and identifying number and carry the same rights.
Only "eligible participants” can take part in the pilot and the tokenized stocks are limited to securities that trade in the Russell 1000 Index, which tracks the 1,000 largest publicly-traded companies in the US by market capitalization, along with exchange-traded funds tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indices.
The approval comes after the Nasdaq announced earlier this month that it had linked up with crypto exchange Kraken to allow its clients to move securities from its infrastructure to tokenized versions that can be used on blockchains and to allow public companies to create and issue their own tokenized shares.
SEC Chair explains why NFTs fall outside of securities laws
After the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outlined four broad categories of digital assets that fall outside securities laws, Chair Paul Atkins offered further clarity on why nonfungible tokens (NFTs) generally do not meet that definition.
In a Wednesday interview with CNBC, Atkins reiterated that the agency’s recent interpretive release identified four types of digital assets that are typically not considered securities: digital commodities, digital tools, digital collectibles such as NFTs, and stablecoins.
During the interview, host Andrew Ross Sorkin pressed Atkins on digital collectibles, noting they could more easily resemble securities depending on how they are structured.
“Well, that’s true with anything,” Atkins replied, emphasizing that the SEC’s analysis still hinges on the facts and circumstances of each asset, particularly whether it involves an investment contract under longstanding legal precedent.
Ethereum aims to cut bridge times by 98% to 13 seconds with new rule
Ethereum client teams are testing an opt-in fast confirmation mechanism that could cut the time some layer-2 networks and exchanges wait to recognize mainnet deposits to about 13 seconds.
The proposed Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) would reduce “deposit time from Ethereum L1 to L2s or exchanges to about 13 seconds, an 80-98% reduction for most L2s and exchanges,” Ethereum researcher Julian Ma wrote on X.
Most users today rely on canonical bridges, where transfers typically wait for multiple block confirmations or full finality, a process that can take around 13 minutes. However, many exchanges and L2s do not wait for finality, instead relying on “k-deep” confirmation rules, which offer no formal guarantees. In k-deep confirmation, a transaction is considered finalized only after k blocks (with k being a specific number).
Developers say the rule can be adopted without a hard fork, though client and API integration work is still underway. Client teams are already working on implementations, and once deployed, nodes can begin using the rule without network-wide coordination. Exchanges, L2s and infrastructure providers are expected to integrate it with minimal changes.
