Latest in Blockchain | December 5, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update. Yesterday was the hotly anticipated SEC investor advisory committee meeting that included a panel discussion on equities tokenization. We know, we also felt like kids on Christmas Eve before this happened. Exciting. Stuff. 

With that in mind, this is a special edition of the Meridian Update to close the week. We’re doing a whole update on that meeting. Let’s dive in.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory: What is an Investor Advisory Committee meeting?

From the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): 

“[It was established to] advise the Commission on regulatory priorities, the regulation of securities products, trading strategies, fee structures, the effectiveness of disclosure, and on initiatives to protect investor interests and to promote investor confidence and the integrity of the securities marketplace.

The Dodd-Frank Act authorizes the committee to submit findings and recommendations for review and consideration by the Commission…Members of the Committee are chosen from among knowledgeable representatives of both retail and institutional investors.”

Basically, it is a committee made up of people from various backgrounds and roles, almost all of whom do not work at the SEC. They develop, collect, have meetings about, and share with the SEC various ideas, recommendations, and feedback about important topics the SEC is considering. Members include academics (university professors), folks from industry (like the head of Vanguard’s equity investment group), and people in state or non-SEC federal government.

Said more plainly, the Investor Advisory Committee gathers a bunch of peoples’ opinions. Some times in public meetings. And then, the SEC does with that information what it will. So it’s simultaneously interesting and important. It’s also not actually setting the rules, regulations, and priorities of the SEC. So it matters. But what the SEC does matters the most.

So why are we covering this meeting so intensely? It’s because it happened. That alone was almost astonishing. If you had told us that the SEC would be openly engaging with discussions about tokenized equities, and that major industry players would be sending representatives to proverbially break bread together about tokenized equities in an SEC setting, we would’ve said, “Maybe…but really?” And yet, here we are. Tokenized equities are really an SEC priority.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory: What’s the context for yesterday’s meeting?

SEC context

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an important regulator in US, and frankly global, financial markets. Part and parcel is that the SEC is an important regulator for on-chain assets. Its importance as a regulator for on-chain assets comes in at least two forms:

1. What it chooses to regulate. If the SEC thinks it should regulate something, because it finds it to be a security, that thing either needs to follow securities law or go into a court battle with the SEC to reject that it is a security. It’s a burden. There are risks.
2. How it operates with respect to the things it has decided to regulate. The SEC can pay attention to something, and write clear rules, or it can leave ambiguity. It can expend more or less effort going after people for suspected violations of various types. It can set forward guidance that, while having no real legal effect, can change how people operate.

The current SEC chair, Paul Atkins, has laid out how he thinks the SEC should approach on-chain assets in his “token taxonomy,” which had Crypto Twitter exceedingly excited back in November. A reminder on what his token taxonomy said about tokenized securities (a broader basket that includes tokenized equities):

“‘...tokenized securities’ are and will continue to be securities. These crypto assets represent the ownership of a financial instrument enumerated in the definition of ‘security’ that is maintained on a crypto network.”

So re: form 1 of the SEC’s importance as a regulator, chair Atkins’s view is clear. The SEC will be regulating tokenized equities.

What about form 2, how it will operate with respect to the things it has decided to regulate? Well, that’s what this whole meeting was about. It was an opportunity for all of us, at one time, to hear how industry players want the SEC to approach tokenized equities. It was also, frankly, a clear signal that the SEC is approaching tokenized equities, which is important in and of itself. The SEC wants to provide regulatory clarity here. It is working on providing regulatory clarity here. We mean this very seriously: it could just not pay attention to tokenized equities, then later go after companies for things it later decides were violations. And that’s a more thorny future to navigate for companies that want to make, sell, or otherwise engage with products or actions in this space.

So the context is that in 2025, the SEC is taking tokenized equities seriously. And that matters.

But what are tokenized equities?

Right now, if you go to your Vanguard, or Schwab, or Fidelity, or whatever brokerage app to buy some shares of Apple, or Google, or Waystar Royco (just kidding), things happen behind the scenes on traditional rails. That includes, at the root, things happening at (more accurately, on servers of) the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Nasdaq, or some other centralized exchange.

The onchain world is proposing a new option. Stock ownership could be tracked, transferred, exchanged, etc. onchain instead. That would mean markets that are open for you 24/7, 365 days of the year. That would mean global access by default. That would mean people could hold their ownership unit (called a token), and trade or transfer it, directly instead of through a brokerage.

That is what people are discussing with tokenized equities.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory: Did we learn anything from the meeting?

We had three major takeaways. 

First, industry disagrees about how to get this done. There were representatives from asset managers, tech companies that act as brokerages, Coinbase, and liquidity providers (also known as market makers). They all gave this vibe of being on the same page. But there were absolutely differences. Everyone was subtly, or not-so-subtly, arguing for the thing that would be better for their particular company. We thought the most obvious of the group was a representative from Citadel, a company some people know from the GameStop meme stock fiasco and the movie “Dumb Money.” Crypto Twitter has been talking about how Citadel has started opposing, in some cases subtly, movements toward more onchain markets. Its representative at the panel dove into a whole presentation that sounded like a lecture about how markets work. Our sense was that none of the panelists were impressed.

What do they all want? It’s all quite in-the-weeds. Generally speaking, there is roughly a shared sense that tokenized equities are a foregone conclusion, at least as an experiment. It’s not clear that everyone likes it. But each participant is focused on getting in particular rules about how things settle, how they’re available, what rules apply to whom, etc.

Second, this is Coinbase’s turf. Coinbase’s representative seemed the most comfortable presenting, gave zero sense that Coinbase is all that worried about how exactly this happens, and jumped at opportunities to set narratives in response to questions. This isn’t surprising. Coinbase is a well-known, full-throated advocate of blockchain technologies. But it was really something to see this come across so clearly in a meeting. We won’t say that everyone else seemed a little uncomfortable, or sounded like they were trying to sell something, or hide something. Just that…Coinbase’s representative really didn’t sound like any of these things.

Third, Citadel seems to be having second thoughts, or some hesitation, while Nasdaq is at least saying it doesn’t. These are two companies that are deeply embedded, and some may say in privileged positions with respect to, the tradition way, the current way, equities change hands in accordance with US law. Citadel is one of the best known market makers. Nasdaq is one of the largest, best known exchanges. Nasdaq’s representative jumped out to say he was behind the SEC chair’s vision for tokenization. The Citadel representative, as we’ve discussed, seemed focused on teaching the participants something. It wasn’t exactly clear what. But the sense was clear. They were supposed to take away something slightly negative about tokenized equities. So, is Nasdaq embracing blockchain technologies, at least for now, and their potential disruption? Is Citadel trying to stop blockchain technologies as much as it can? The answers seemed like yes and yes yesterday. Something to keep an eye on.

That’s a wrap

The SEC’s investor advisory committee meeting had a notable panel discussion on equities tokenization, so we did a deep dive. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.

Think we missed something today? Send us a note: email@meridianupdate.com.