Brett Redfearn, president of Securitize and a former director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets, said the SEC’s delayed exemption for tokenized stocks will likely let public companies object before a third party puts their shares onchain.
In an interview with Unchained recorded on Sept. 10, Redfearn said, 「I believe that the innovation exemption is likely going to do something akin to an issuer opt-out.」
How the exemption may work
Under the structure Redfearn described, a firm that wants to tokenize a company’s stock would first have to notify the company. The issuer would then get a period of time to respond. Redfearn described it as something like 30 days for the company to say yes or no.
If the company rejects the plan, its stock would stay off the platform. If it does not answer, Redfearn said, 「if they don’t respond, people are gonna go ahead.」
The SEC has not published the exemption. The agency delayed it in May and again in August.
Debate over issuer consent
Redfearn said earlier expectations were that the exemption might not require company approval at all. That idea met resistance, including from the Securities Transfer Association, a trade group representing firms that maintain shareholder records for companies.
In a July 1 letter, the group said any exemption should apply only to 「Issuer-Sponsored Tokens.」 Securitize builds that type of product, putting shares onchain with the issuing company’s involvement.
Robinhood takes a different approach
Robinhood is on the other side of that debate. Its stock tokens, sold to investors outside the United States, drew an objection from AMC this month.
In a post on Friday, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev wrote that moving stocks onchain should not give the issuer a veto it never had offchain. He said companies should weigh in only when a product changes shareholders’ rights or the official record of who owns the stock.
Voting and in-kind redemption on Robinhood’s roadmap
On Monday, Tenev said in another post that in-kind redemption and voting are coming to Robinhood’s stock tokens.
Redfearn said that if Robinhood brings the offering to the U.S., he believes the SEC will require it to include full security entitlements, including voting, dividends, corporate actions, and similar rights.