SEC Opens the Door to Tokenized U.S. Stocks After CLARITY Failure | CoinDesk Daily

Jennifer Sanasie (0:00)

The SAC cracks open the door to trading real stocks on blockchains, and Iran has been settling straight up Hormuz tolls through a Bitcoin exchange. This is CoinDesk Daily.

Want trusted crypto research? Check out The Stack, Grayscale's blog. Visit grayscale.com/thestack.

RealFi, a smarter stablecoin backed by real world assets. Join the testnet now at realfi.co. The SEC approved a new innovation exemption that gives firms a five-year runway to trade real tokenized US stocks on public blockchains. The framework excludes synthetic products that only track a price, putting pressure on offshore offerings like Robinhood stock tokens, Kraken's x-stocks and Ondo Finance's products. It also opens a regulated lane for DeFi. Tokenized stocks can trade through automated market makers without registering as exchanges, as long as venues layer on KYC in trading limits. Public companies have slowed down their bitcoin buys, pulling away a key source of demand behind the last bull run. Corporate treasuries added just 5,900 bitcoin over the past three months, according to Glassnode. A year earlier, they bought more than 100,000 in the same stretch, including 89,000 in July 2025 alone. Strategy accounted for most of the recent buying. As a group, these treasuries are now under water, with an average cost basis around $80,500.

And the US Treasury says Iran has been running straight of Hormuz toll payments through a crypto exchange. Iran charges tankers between $1 and $2 million to cross the strait. Since June, part of that money has moved through BitBank, a Tehran exchange that OFAC just sanctioned, along with the software firm that built it. OFAC alleges BitBank moved hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Get more updates on coindesk.com. Want trusted crypto research? Check out The Stack, Grayscale's blog. Visit grayscale.com/thestack.

RealFi, a smarter stablecoin backed by real world assets. Join the testnet now at realfi.co.