Nasdaq crypto chief pledges to ‘move as fast as we can’ on tokenized stocks

The US Nasdaq stock exchange is making SEC approval of its proposal to offer tokenized versions of stocks listed on the exchange a top priority, according to the exchange’s crypto chief.

“We’ll just move as fast as we can,” Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said during an interview with CNBC on Thursday, when asked whether the SEC could approve the proposal this year.

“I think what we have to really evaluate where the public comments come back in and then answer and respond to the SEC questions as they come through,” Savarese said. “We hope to kind of work with them as quickly as possible,” Savarese said.

Savarese says Nasdaq isn’t “upending the system”

The proposal, submitted by Nasdaq on Sept. 8, is requesting to allow investors to buy and sell stock tokens — digital representations of shares in publicly traded companies — on the exchange.

Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is not trying to overhaul the way stocks are invested in when asked whether he expects other major exchanges to follow suit.

“We’re not looking at upending the system; we want everyone to come along for that ride and bring tokenization more into the mainstream,” he said.

“We want to do it in that responsible investor-led way first, under the SEC rules themselves,” he added.

It was only in October that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that tokenization will “eventually eat the whole financial system.”

The crypto industry is divided on tokenized equities

Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is aiming to be an innovator in the ecosystem, noting that the exchange was the first to transition markets from paper-based trading to electronic systems.

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Tokenizing stocks has been one of the most significant talking points in the crypto industry this year.

On Sept. 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the company became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its equity on a major blockchain following its launch on the Solana network.

The conversation around tokenized equities has also drawn skepticism from the crypto industry.

On Oct. 1, Rob Hadick, general partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, told Cointelegraph that tokenized equities will be a significant benefit to traditional markets, but may not be a boon to the crypto industry as others have predicted.

Hadick said that if tokenized stocks use layer-2 networks, it creates “leakage” as value and may not flow back to Ethereum or the broader crypto ecosystem as much as hoped.

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