The SEC granted tokenized securities venues a five year conditional exemption from the Exchange Act’s definition of an exchange, allowing them to trade tokenized US stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. The order was issued Sept. 17.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also expanded relief previously granted to Phantom to eligible passive software providers, including wallet developers and firms outside crypto. Under the staff’s no-action position, providers can connect customers to registered firms and venues for regulated derivatives trading, including event and perpetual contracts, without registering as introducing brokers. Their software cannot hold customer assets, generate explicit buy or sell signals, or exercise discretion over order routing or execution. A participating venue must accept joint liability for the software’s conduct.

The actions came two days after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act, a crypto market structure bill, with 49 votes in favor and 50 against, short of the 60 needed. SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Chair Michael Selig had pledged to proceed with crypto rules under their agencies’ existing authority.