SEC Examiners Turn Their Eyes to Tokenization in 2027

The SEC's Division of Examinations, in priorities published October 23, named tokenization a focus area under evolving market infrastructure risks for the fiscal year that began October 1, alongside Treasury clearing reforms. The program covers more than 34,000 registrants, including investment advisers, broker-dealers, clearing agencies and transfer agents. The listing came after the SEC's September 17 temporary conditional relief letting certain tokenized-securities venues operate without exchange registration and some liquidity providers without dealer registration; Chairman Paul Atkins called the order a bridge to durable rulemaking. Separately, the SEC censured OTC Link on September 22 and fined it $575,000 over Regulation SCI failures at its trading system from August 2016 to March 2025; OTC Link settled without admitting the findings.