The moves followed CoinDesk's report late Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was set to further delay its anticipated “innovation exemption,” which is expected to make it easier for companies to offer trading in tokenized securities. Concerns from the White House and Wall Street over the proposal's legal footing and potential market impact have held up the plan.
Adding to the uncertainty, the SEC canceled a meeting scheduled for Friday where commissioners planned to consider whether to propose new rules creating a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.
The impact wasn't limited to stocks. The innovation exemption had also been expected to provide some regulatory relief for trading through decentralized finance venues, meaning the delay reaches beyond publicly traded tokenization companies. Uniswap's UNI (UNI), the native token of the decentralized exchange, fell 7% over the past 24 hours, making it the weakest performer in the CoinDesk 20 Index both Friday and this week.
For comparison, the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500 and bitcoin were all mostly flat during the day.
A ‘speed bump,’ not the end of the tokenization trade
The setback could stretch out the timeline for U.S. tokenization, but it doesn't necessarily change the longer-term story, according to Owen Lau, managing director and senior analyst at Clear Street.