The Nasdaq stock exchange has made it a priority to get the SEC to approve its proposal to offer tokenized versions of stocks listed on the exchange, according to the exchange’s head of cryptocurrencies.
“We just want to act as quickly as possible,” Matt Savarese, head of digital asset strategy at Nasdaq, said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, when asked if the SEC could approve the proposal this year.
“I think we need to really evaluate where the public comments come back and respond and respond to the SEC’s questions,” Savarese said. “We hope to work with them as soon as possible,” Savarese said.
Savarese says Nasdaq isn’t ‘upsetting the system’
The proposal, filed by Nasdaq on September 8, calls for investors to be able to buy and sell equity tokens – digital representations of stocks in publicly traded companies – on exchanges.
Asked whether he expects other major exchanges to follow suit, Savarese stressed that Nasdaq is not intending to overhaul the way it invests in stocks.
Matt Savarese, Nasdaq’s head of digital assets, told CNBC on Thursday. sauce: CNBC
“We’re not looking to overturn the system; we want everyone to join in the effort and bring tokenization more into the mainstream,” he said.
“We want to do that in a responsible, investor-driven way, first based on the SEC rules themselves,” he added.
It was in October that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that tokenization “will ultimately undermine the entire financial system.”
Crypto industry is divided on tokenized stocks
Savarese noted that Nasdaq was the first exchange to transition its market from paper-based trading to an electronic system, and emphasized that Nasdaq aims to be an innovator in the ecosystem.
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Stock tokenization is one of the most important topics in the cryptocurrency industry this year.
On September 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the company became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its stock on a major blockchain after launching on the Solana Network.
The debate over tokenized stocks has also sparked skepticism from the crypto industry.
On October 1, Rob Haddick, general partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, told Cointelegraph that while tokenized stocks are a big boon for traditional markets, they may not be a boon for the crypto industry as others have predicted.
Haddick said that when tokenized stocks use Layer 2 networks, there is a “leakage” of value that may not return to Ethereum or the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem as much as expected.
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