The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Sept. 18 relief document on tokenized securities was quickly read by the market as a green light for onchain equities, helping lift sentiment across crypto and fueling bets that names tied to tokenization infrastructure could benefit. Brian Huang, co-founder of DeFi protocol Glider, argued in a Sept. 22 post on X that the market reaction ran ahead of what the 60-page document actually permits. After reading the filing in full, Huang said the exemption is tightly limited to permissioned participants, requires tokenized National Market System stocks to be registered with the SEC, and does not cover the permissionless stock-linked tokens already available from platforms including Robinhood, Coinbase, Binance, Ondo and xStocks. He also said the framework centers on automated market maker venues rather than central limit order book models such as Hyperliquid, even though the SEC itself acknowledges best-execution concerns under AMM-based trading. Huang described the proposal as lacking clear market demand and argued that no existing institution fully meets the requirements. He pointed to a long compliance checklist, issuer veto power over tokenized listings, equal shareholder-rights requirements, and a trading-volume cap of 0.25% of the prior month’s average daily volume in the underlying NMS stock. He said Glider expects to submit a formal comment letter to the SEC seeking broader exemptive relief.

Goldman Sachs said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has created a compliant path for tokenized stock trading in the United States by granting certain exchanges and liquidity providers a five-year conditional registration exemption. The bank said the Sept. 17 order is the first broad opening for U.S. tokenized equities, but it also argued that the near-term effect should remain limited because the framework comes with tight constraints. According to Goldman’s Sept. 18 report, only venues using automated market maker, or AMM, order books can qualify, while traditional exchanges and most centralized crypto exchanges rely on central limit order books and do not fit the exemption. The order also applies only to natively tokenized shares, excludes derivative-style tokenized stocks, and gives issuers the right to object before trading begins. Goldman added that tokenized securities venues must face limits on ticker count and trading volume, provide shareholder rights and dividends comparable to the underlying stock, use auditable smart contracts deployed on public blockchains, and disclose operating and trading information. Within Goldman’s coverage universe, Coinbase and Robinhood could build tokenized stock businesses in the U.S., but Goldman said Coinbase stands to benefit more directly because its brokerage product already matches many of the exemption’s requirements. The bank also said the direct competitive threat to Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange remains limited for now, while broader legislative reform, including the stalled CLARITY Act, remains the bigger long-term variable.

Dolphin Research published a detailed analysis of SanDisk and the NAND flash industry, arguing that the sector’s core problem is structural rather than cyclical in the traditional sense. Even when manufacturers slash wafer starts and cut capital spending, bit supply can still rise because node migration keeps improving output per wafer. Using SanDisk as the main case study, the report shows that the company’s flash bit shipments rose from 38 EB to 101 EB between 2019 and 2025, while ASP per GB fell from $0.206 to $0.073, leaving revenue slightly lower at $7.36 billion versus $7.82 billion six years earlier. The piece also revisits the demand slowdown in 2022 and 2023 across smartphones, PCs, and enterprise SSDs, and argues that NAND’s downturn was driven almost entirely by price rather than volume. It then contrasts NAND with DRAM at the physical and economic level: NAND can keep expanding supply through vertical stacking and lateral scaling, while DRAM relies far more on new fabs because its cell structure limits density gains. That difference, according to the report, explains why DRAM and HBM require much heavier capital investment, while NAND can look more like a cash-generating business if supply discipline holds.

Bankless co-founder David Hoffman said on Sept. 18 that the market has already entered altcoin season and that the real move arrived earlier than expected. Odaily followed that call with a long watchlist covering eight tokens: HYPE, LIT, UNI, PUMP, MORPHO, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV. The report ties the renewed attention to several factors already visible in the market, including Bitcoin moving back above $81,000, Ether reclaiming $2,600, and a policy backdrop shaped by recent signals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The article runs through each project by sector rather than treating the rally as a single trade. Hyperliquid’s HYPE is framed around record open interest and token buybacks. Lighter’s LIT is presented as a compliance-focused perpetuals platform token with a large community allocation. UNI is linked to tokenized equities, permissioned pools, and renewed fee-switch deflation expectations. PUMP is described as a buyback-driven Solana meme launchpad token, while MORPHO is highlighted for its lending model and ties to Robinhood Chain activity. Odaily also spends significant space on privacy and AI-linked names. ZEC is described as the strongest privacy-token mover of the cycle, NEAR is recast through a privacy feature for perpetual trading, and VVV is positioned around AI privacy infrastructure on Base. The report closes by citing glassnode’s view that altcoin leverage remains below a risk threshold for now.

WuBlockchain’s weekly roundup focused on policy, regulation and institutional moves across crypto and traditional finance. The U.S. Federal Reserve raised its target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00% in a unanimous 12-0 vote, while saying inflation remains elevated. In Washington, the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the U.S. Senate after falling short of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture, with support not even reaching 50. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also approved a temporary conditional “Innovation Exemption” that would let qualified tokenized securities venues pilot trading in tokenized NMS stocks under a limited framework. Outside the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported that European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde personally intervened in a process that would have given Binance a foothold in the EU through Greece. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority said banks will still be allowed to keep payment restrictions on crypto exchanges even after the new cryptoasset regime takes effect in 2027. The week also included major industry developments: CoinEx said it will wind down its exchange after nearly nine years and close withdrawals on Dec. 22; the New York Stock Exchange is said to be working toward 24/7 on-chain trading through an ATS platform; Column launched bank-native stablecoin infrastructure; Circle launched the Arc mainnet and minted 10 billion ARC tokens; and Deutsche Bank said it plans to roll out crypto custody later this year, pending final regulatory approval.

Tokenized U.S. equity-related names mostly moved higher after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced its "innovation exemption," according to RootData TradFi market data cited by ChainCatcher. The move was not uniform across segments, with gains concentrated in several crypto assets and select TradFi-linked U.S. stocks while a few names lagged or slipped. On the crypto side, UNI led the group with a 33.8% gain over the past 24 hours. ARB rose 24.96%, while BP (Backpack) added 20.49%. RAY, AERO and JUP were also higher, up 15.72%, 13.63% and 12.74%, respectively. ONDO gained 9.61%. Among TradFi U.S. equities, SECZ (Securitize) rose 14.93% and BLSH (Bullish) climbed 8.82%. CRCL, COIN and HOOD posted gains of 5.77%, 5.75% and 5.16%, while GLXY edged up 0.04%. BR (Broadridge) was the outlier, falling 1.66%. Earlier, the SEC said it would grant temporary, conditional relief to qualifying tokenized securities venues, or TSVs, backing permissioned AMM trading for tokenized U.S. stocks that carry equivalent shareholder rights.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an "Innovation Exemption" order that creates a five-year compliance window for certain on-chain trading venues handling tokenized National Market System stocks. Under the order, qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues, or TSVs, can use permissioned AMM liquidity pools to trade tokenized equities without being treated as exchanges under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, while liquidity providers using their own capital may avoid dealer status. The order sets clear limits. Tokenized shares must carry the same economic and governance rights as traditional stocks, including dividends and voting rights. Issuers get a veto right over third-party tokenized listings after a 30-day notice period, and synthetic products that only track price exposure are excluded. The SEC also requires auditable smart contracts, public deployment on permissionless distributed ledgers, synchronized halts when underlying stocks are suspended, and regular public disclosures on prices, trade size, time, pool addresses, and end-of-day balances. The announcement lifted tokenization-related names including Securitize, Bullish, Coinbase, Robinhood, and UNI, while drawing opposition from Citadel Securities and SIFMA. The move arrives after the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, making administrative exemptions a key tool for SEC Chair Paul Atkins and fellow commissioners pushing a digital-market agenda.

Real-world asset markets eased slightly in the latest weekly window, but user growth kept accelerating. PANews said RWA on-chain market capitalization stood at $38.53 billion as of Sept. 18, down 0.75% from a month earlier, while the number of asset holders climbed to 4.436 million, up 85.84%. Stablecoins also stayed on an upward track, with total market capitalization reaching $303.35 billion and monthly transfer volume rising to $7.03 trillion. The week’s biggest regulatory development came from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which approved a temporary, conditional Innovation Exemption for tokenized National Market System stocks. The move allows limited trading on certain blockchain-based venues and gives the agency a way to collect market data before writing longer-term rules. Hong Kong, meanwhile, said it wants to support issuance and trading of gold and other suitable RWAs on licensed platforms, while the European Central Bank, the U.K., Thailand and India each advanced separate tokenization or digital currency initiatives. On the industry side, SWIFT launched a tokenized deposit cross-border payments pilot with 17 banks, Ondo’s broker-dealer unit joined DTCC’s Fund/SERV network, Aave prepared a dedicated RWA lending market on Avalanche, and Centrifuge rolled out a tokenized high-yield corporate bond fund with New York Life Investment Management. Funding activity also stayed focused on tokenization infrastructure and stablecoin settlement rails, with tZERO, Velocity, dtcpay and Fin.com all announcing fresh capital.