Nasdaq is treating approval for tokenized stocks as a priority. The exchange is ready to answer regulatory questions and respond to feedback as soon as the SEC provides direction.

Matt Savarese, who leads digital assets strategy at Nasdaq, told CNBC at a technology conference in Florida that the company hopes to finalize the process without unnecessary delays.

“I think we have to really evaluate where the public comments come back in and then answer and respond to the SEC questions as they come through,” Savarese said. “We hope to kind of work with them as quickly as possible.”

Nasdaq Pushes for Tokenized Stock Trading as SEC Review Continues

Nasdaq filed an official request to enable trading in tokenized securities nearly three months ago.

The September 8 filing asks the SEC to let investors buy and sell stock tokens on Nasdaq's platform, with those tokens representing actual shares in listed companies. Savarese emphasized that the proposal does not overhaul how stocks trade or settle under existing national market system rules.

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“We're not looking at upending the system,” he said. “We want everyone to come along for that ride and bring tokenization more into the mainstream, but we want to do it in that responsible investor-led way first under the SEC rules themselves.”

The exchange wants to avoid fragmenting liquidity or creating separate pools that could thin out during volatile periods. Nasdaq has said the trading side remains unchanged: the same order book, execution standards and regulatory framework apply to both traditional and tokenized shares.​

“The stock is the stock and what's really important is that we focus to make sure that the investor is first and they have the full rights and title that the shareholder should have as part of owning that share,” Savarese said.

Post-Trade Efficiency Drives Business Case

Near-term benefits center on back-end settlement processes, according to Savarese. Tokenized shares could settle faster than the current system, potentially reaching instant or atomic settlement over time. However, Nasdaq acknowledges that industry infrastructure needs to catch up before that happens at scale.

Collateral management is another area where tokenization could reduce costs and improve capital efficiency. Investors could move tokenized stocks between accounts or use them as collateral for loans without the delays and overcollateralization that current systems require.

That argument echoes recent statements from Caroline Pham, acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who called collateral management the “killer app” for blockchain technology in traditional finance. The CFTC is racing to complete a 12-month initiative to integrate tokenized collateral into derivatives markets. Major clearinghouses will potentially start accepting the new forms of margin by the first or second quarter of 2026.

Competition Heats Up for Stock Token Market

Robinhood has launched a tokenized stock offering in Europe that covers nearly 800 U.S. securities. CEO Vlad Tenev called tokenization “the biggest innovation in capital markets in well over a decade.” The brokerage is building toward a system where users could withdraw tokenized stocks and use them as collateral for crypto loans on decentralized finance platforms.

Switzerland's BX Digital exchange received regulatory approval in March to offer tokenized stocks through a partnership with Ondo Finance, enabling round-the-clock trading with real-time settlement tied to the Swiss National Bank's payment system. Bitget doubled its tokenized equity volume to $1 billion within two weeks of launching the product, signaling retail appetite for blockchain-based stock trading.

Galaxy Digital became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its own shares in September, launching Class A common stock on the Solana blockchain through a partnership with Superstate. The offering gives shareholders the option to hold and transfer their equity on-chain while maintaining full SEC-registered rights.​

“We are kind of the original innovator in this ecosystem,” Savarese said. “When things moved from paper-based to electronic form, we were the ones that kind of brought that into the market and it's evolutionary. It's not really revolutionary.”