SEC grants five-year exemptions for tokenized stock trading venues

Where Left and Right agree, and where they split

Where Left and Right agree

Both frames agree issuer consent is the only enforced veto in the exemption regime, and that the five-year window makes this a real, tested opening for blockchain trading infrastructure.

Where Left and Right split

Retail investors losing exchange and dealer protections they can't replace themselves, or issuers retaining the one consent right that actually matters.

Why they won’t converge

This is a trust-in-institution divide: whether an SEC-issued exemption and issuer consent can substitute for statutory registration and exchange rules, a question no amount of agreement on the exemption's terms resolves.