SEC opens public hearing on draft Transition Bond and Thai Amber Bond regulations

The SEC granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief on September 17 allowing approved venues to trade tokenized exchange-listed stocks onchain, sending Robinhood Markets Inc. shares up just over 9% on September 18 after a 5% gain the previous session. The relief exempts qualifying venues from the Exchange Act's definitions of "exchange" and, for certain liquidity providers, "dealer," but it requires full shareholder rights including voting and dividends, meaning Robinhood's existing stock tokens, which are synthetic products offering economic exposure rather than actual ownership, do not qualify. The order also lets listed companies object to third-party tokenization within 30 days, a provision directly at odds with the public stance of CEO Vlad Tenev, and the relief remains temporary and subject to public comments, with Coinbase and the NYSE's planned 24/7 digital venue potentially entering the compliant space first. Robinhood traded roughly 31.7 million shares, about 1.37 times its one-month average, though the stock sits about 28% below its 52-week high, with a forward P/E of 45.46x against a sector median of 10.88x. Hedge fund holders rose from 84 at the end of the first quarter of 2026 to 87 at the end of the second quarter of 2026, and short interest stood at 4.54% of float as of August 31, 2026.

Coinbase has completed its integration of Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange, which it acquired for about $2.9 billion, creating Coinbase Global Exchange, the first and only crypto exchange with a unified global liquidity pool. Liz Martin, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, announced the completion of the integration at Token2049 in Singapore, saying the new exchange brings US and international customers into one place and combines the company's US retail base with its international base alongside an upgrade of its professional trading tools, Coinbase Advanced. Martin said Coinbase is launching spot margin and options for pro traders in a unified portfolio offering maximum buying power and lower fees, and that the company has "super ambitious" volume growth plans. She said Coinbase is diversifying revenue through an "everything exchange" that now includes equities, equity options, perpetual futures, pre-IPOs, commodities and prediction markets, and that the company announced last week a clearing platform for prediction markets in the US along with intentions to launch its own prediction markets. On tokenization, Martin said Coinbase recently launched tokenized equities for customers outside the US, giving holders the same shareholder rights as actual stock ownership, and cited a survey finding that about 60% of its institutional clients are excited about tokenization and investing in tokenized assets. She said Coinbase sees the APAC region as a major growth area, having opened a new headquarters in Singapore about two months ago and acquired licenses in Australia and India.

The Solana Foundation announced Solana DvP, a settlement platform for financial institutions, in New York on October 6. It aims to execute asset delivery and payment simultaneously on the Solana blockchain, completing securities trade settlement in seconds. J.P. Morgan advised on the practices and requirements of securities settlement at financial institutions. The Solana Foundation is offering it as an open-source settlement platform that companies can use in common. DvP stands for Delivery versus Payment, a settlement method that links the delivery of securities with payment of the purchase price. According to the Solana Foundation, institutional investor transactions on conventional blockchains have often relied on individually built smart contracts, but Solana DvP aims to standardize this settlement processing and will be released under the MIT license, allowing use and modification. The platform supports Solana's major token standards and also offers functions such as issuer control over transfers and the ability to pause them. It envisions banks, asset custody companies, exchanges and others acting as settlement agents. However, it is limited to transactions in which both the assets and the payment instrument are tokens on Solana. Technical documentation from the Solana Foundation explains that while simultaneous settlement removes principal risk between parties, the credit risk and redemption risk of token issuers remain. Efforts to link the delivery of digital securities with payment are also advancing in Japan. Nine companies including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation announced on October 6 that they had completed the second phase of a proof-of-concept experiment for simultaneous settlement of digital securities using stablecoins. The Solana Foundation says Solana DvP has undergone an external security audit and is ready for use with real funds. Meanwhile, it is recruiting partner companies and initial participants ahead of the full release.

The United Kingdom has named six large banks as a pilot group to issue digital government bonds, with operations expected to begin in early 2027. The trial falls under the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox framework, a program for testing the settlement and trading of securities using distributed ledger technology, or DLT. HSBC is among the institutions taking part in the testing. The digital government bond is called the Digital Gilt Instrument and is seen as a major step in applying tokenization technology to the UK government bond market.

Major cryptocurrency exchange OKX announced on the 6th that it has completed a strategic investment from Circle, Ripple, SC Ventures under Standard Chartered, and asset manager Cube Research and Technologies, at a pre-money valuation of $25 billion, or just under 4 trillion yen. The investment is an extension of the March round led by Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. OKX framed the move as an effort to bring together companies handling each segment of the financial infrastructure, including stablecoin issuance, liquidity, collateral and custody, to build a next-generation on-chain market in which these core elements work in concert. Founder and CEO Star Xu said the funds would serve as capital for tokenizing real-world assets, adding that the exchange is a starting point and is evolving into a broader global financial technology platform.