The Blockchain Association filed a comment letter on August 11, 2026, supporting a June SEC proposal to rescind Rules 611 and 610(e) of Regulation NMS, a 2005 regulatory package that governs how US stock trades are executed across exchanges. The Association argued in its submission to the SEC docket (S7-2026-20) that the rules have "failed to achieve their stated purposes" and, in the Association's broader view, have created structural barriers to modern on-chain financial infrastructure. The Blockchain Association's Summer Mersinger testified before the House Financial Services Committee in March 2026 on the need for regulatory reform to accommodate tokenization, underscoring the Association's sustained engagement with this issue on Capitol Hill.

The comment period, which opened after the SEC published its 267-page rulemaking document, runs for 60 days. A final decision is not expected before early 2027.

What the Rules Actually Do

Rule 611, known as the trade-through rule, requires that any venue executing a stock trade must match or beat the best nationally quoted price available across all exchanges at that moment. Rule 610(e) bars exchanges from displaying quotes that would "lock" or "cross" prices shown on other markets. Both rules were designed to protect investors from receiving worse prices than those publicly available in fragmented markets.

The Blockchain Association, Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn, and SEC Chairman Atkins himself have all argued that both rules assume a world of centralised, connected exchanges operating in real time.

Automated market makers, the core liquidity mechanism of decentralised finance, do not work that way. They execute trades through bonding curves (mathematical pricing mechanisms embedded in smart contracts) at the speed of blockchain block times and cannot access the National Best Bid and Offer data feed, halt transactions when a better price appears on a traditional exchange, or route orders across venues.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, put the practical consequence plainly: "An AMM can't route intermarket sweep orders...any pool in a tokenized NMS stock would commit trade-throughs constantly."

According to Thorn and the Blockchain Association, compliant DeFi trading of US equities is structurally impossible under current rules.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins dissented from Rule 611's original adoption in 2005, arguing at the time that the rule would constrain competition, stifle innovation, and fail to achieve its objectives. In June, Atkins said that after two decades of Rule 611, it was high time for the Commission to review the rule's unintended consequences, which had hindered rather than enhanced the long-term growth of US markets.

A Growing Market Stuck at the Edges of DeFi

The regulatory friction shows up directly in on-chain data. Tokenized equities represent approximately $2.7 billion in on-chain value, a figure that grew roughly 2,878% between January 2025 and January 2026.

Yet only $78.27 million of that total, about 2.9%, is actively deployed inside DeFi protocols.

The rest sits in centralised-but-blockchain-based wrappers, unable to be used as collateral in lending markets, pooled in AMMs, or integrated into permissionless yield strategies.

Ondo Global Markets is one of the leading platforms in the tokenized equity space, with over $650 million in total value locked and more than $12 billion in cumulative trading volume. Its platform covers 430-plus US stocks, ETFs, and commodities across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain. The platform is available to users in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America, but not to US residents.

Benchmark analysts have called the NMS rescission proposal "the year's most consequential US crypto rule," ranking it above stablecoin legislation and Bitcoin ETF modifications in terms of structural policy significance.

The securities industry association SIFMA has also expressed support for the proposal.

What It Means Outside the United States

The practical stakes are sharpest in markets where access to US equities has historically required foreign brokerage accounts, minimum capital requirements, or currency conversion infrastructure that excludes most retail investors.

Luno launched tokenized US stock access in South Africa in August 2025, then expanded to Nigeria the following month. The Nigeria offering allows users to buy fractional shares in companies including Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla, and Amazon with as little as 100 naira, roughly $0.07 at current exchange rates.

Ayotunde Alabi, CEO of Luno Nigeria, described the access gap the product is designed to close: "Financial inclusion is a major priority; tokenization enables someone with just a few thousand naira to gain exposure to global stocks, which was impossible before."

If Rules 611 and 610(e) are rescinded, platforms serving users in Nigeria, Kenya, India, Pakistan, and similar markets would clear one structural barrier to integrating tokenized US stocks into DeFi composability layers, though broader regulatory gaps would remain.

That means users who currently hold tokenized shares as passive instruments could potentially use them as collateral for loans, deposit them into liquidity pools, or access yield strategies, all without a traditional brokerage relationship.

Important caveats apply. Rescinding NMS rules does not constitute approval of tokenized stock trading. Separate questions around exchange registration, clearance, and settlement remain unresolved in the US. Locally, platforms like Luno Nigeria are operating on the basis of a pending incubation program application with the Nigerian SEC, without full regulatory approval. The persistence of local regulatory friction is illustrated by Risevest, another African tokenized stock platform, which routed its product through a Caribbean entity to navigate the regulatory constraints it faced in its home market.

A 2% transaction fee on tokenized stock purchases at Luno Nigeria also remains a meaningful friction point for low-income retail participants.

What Comes Next

The 60-day comment window gives market participants, exchanges, and trading venues the opportunity to weigh in before any final rule takes effect. If the rules are rescinded, oversight of trade execution would shift to FINRA Rule 5310, a principles-based best-execution standard, replacing the current trade-by-trade compliance regime under Rule 611.

The SEC has approved tokenized equity trading rules for both Nasdaq (March 2026) and NYSE (April 2026), signaling that the broader regulatory direction favors integration rather than restriction.

If the NMS rescission is finalized in early 2027 on schedule, it would remove one of the most significant structural barriers to DeFi-native US equity trading, a development with the sharpest implications for retail investors in emerging markets who face the highest barriers to US equity access.