NYSE handles Blockchain.com bringing U.S.-style tokens to users of crypto

Blockchain.com and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow Blockchain.com users to access stocks and funds listed in the US as tokens through NYSE's digital trading platform.

Under the proposed agreement, Blockchain.com will be a supplier of U.S. stocks and ETF token coins traded on NYSE's Digital Option Trading System (ATS), subject to regulatory approval. The deal will help expand NYSE cryptocurrency services to Blockchain.com 's global customer base.

In addition, the agreement also covers an exchange of market data as ICE Data Services, a NYSE-owned company, plans to bring cryptocurrency and analytical market data from Blockchain.com to customers while Blockchain.com will add some market information from ICE and NYSE onto its platform.

Reid Noch, Senior Vice President of U.S. Stock Market Structures at TD Securities told Cointelegraph that the NYSE's ATS token appears to be "focused primarily on the buying and selling process for retail investors" by pointing out a 24-hour-a-day trading schedule with a request-for-quotes feature due to which there is already an advance transfer of funds transitioning into account settlement immediately so no need to change the original operating steps

"What really makes a difference is the buying and selling on weekends", Noch said. "This can affect stocks where investors are heavily leveraged, or times when news events have become widespread, similar to what we saw with Perps-style oil tankers in the early days of the Iran conflict that began over the weekend".

The stock market is competing for entry into the Token Exchange

"Crypto platforms are becoming multi-asset platforms, and traditional assets are leading a 24/7 programmable infrastructure where cryptocurrencies can be leveraged", Tanay Ved, senior researcher from digital asset technology company Talos Institute told Cointelegraph.

The change occurred among major cryptocurrency exchanges, with Kraken supporting the launch of xStocks and catching up with Nasdaq in a separate token stock model. While Binance , Coinbase and Robinhood launched their own ways to bring stocks on the blockchain

However, Ved notes that these different approaches have a trade-off between rights and access:

"Tokenine models are in a spectrum ranging from stocks issued by direct issuers to holdings through asset managers and derivatives, all with different access rights and no one yet knows which model will win because we're still in the early stages of adoption. For the cryptocurrency market, opportunities are more diverse, and for markets, the dividing line between cryptocurrencies and traditional assets is becoming increasingly blurred".

Meanwhile, the tokenized bond market is growing rapidly with a value that has reached $3.14 billion as of Wednesday, up more than 18% in the past 30 days while the number of holders rose nearly 72% to 3.87 million accounts according to data from RWA .xyz

SEC Opened to shareholders

The partnership comes less than a week after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) introduced a five-year "Innovation Exemption" for certain cryptocurrency platforms.

Subject to such exceptions, an appropriately qualified securities exchange platform may use a licensed automated form liquidity pool in order to facilitate the trading of securities that are not classified as exchanges under the Exchange Act on condition that the platform must guarantee that the securities have special rights and privileges comparable to those of ordinary shares.

These rules make certain existing products ineligible for the exchange except in their current form, including Kraken 's xStocks and Robinhood 's stock tokens , which provide access to basic shares but do not give holders rights comparable to those of ordinary shareholders.

However, Hester Peirce CEO of SEC said that although this exemption would only cover one model for cryptocurrencies, it also opens the door to other approaches beyond this framework.