Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
A $5.5 trillion tokenization forecast asks the market to grow 324-fold by 2030
The SEC published its Innovation Exemption for digital securities this week. The part that binds is a requirement that a tokenized NMS stock carry the same dividends, votes and liquidation rights as the share.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The Securities and Exchange Commission published its Innovation Exemption for digital securities this week. Tokenization firms in the US and Europe welcomed it in public statements.
- Crowdfund Insider says it is the first time a major global regulator has written tokenization requirements into a formal regulatory order.
- A director of S01 Issuer GmbH, which issues a tokenized equity product in Europe, puts the tokenization market at around $17 billion today and $5.5 trillion by 2030.
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Why it matters
- constraint A venue whose product is price-tracking exposure cannot qualify under the exemption, so reaching US investors means first paying for custody of the underlying share, dividend pass-through and voting.
- decision A five-year term dates the payback: a firm starting the custody and corporate-actions build now has to earn it back inside the window it was granted.
- capability Firms already running rights-bearing tokens under a European prospectus have a working design and a built legal structure to bring into the US framework.
Nick Magliocchetti, a director of S01 Issuer GmbH, put the tokenization market at around $17 billion today and $5.5 trillion by 2030 [5], a multiple of about 324 [1]. Four years to cover that distance means growing roughly 4.2 times a year, in each of the four years [2]. Against the US equity market that Crowdfund Insider put above $75 trillion [13], the 2030 figure is about 7.3% and the base about 0.02% [3][4]. The forecast comes from an issuer: S01 issues the ST0x token [7].
The part of the order that binds, as described by Bitget Wallet COO Alvin Kan, is a rights test. A tokenized National Market System stock must give holders the same rights and privileges as the equivalent traditional share, including economic interest, dividends, voting rights and liquidation rights. The scope explicitly excludes synthetic exposure [3]. "Putting both on a blockchain doesn't erase that difference," Kan said of a price-tracking token and an owned share [4]. The report does not quote the order's own text.
That condition turns a listing decision into a custody project. A venue that currently sells price exposure has to reach the underlying share, pass dividends through and carry votes to the holder before it can use the exemption. The engineering time goes there. Adding tickers waits behind it. S01 has the shape running in Europe: ST0x is a one-to-one, fully redeemable Right of Exchange into underlying shares held with regulated custodians. It is issued under a Base Prospectus approved by the Liechtenstein FMA and passported across the EEA, with secondary trading on Base [7], live since March 2026 [8].
Richard Baker, CEO and founder of Tokenovate, said "The SEC's five-year exemption gives firms a regulated environment in which to develop this model in the US, with investor rights and issuer involvement built in" [9]. He put the constraint on the back end: "As trading becomes continuous, settlement and collateral processes must keep pace" [10].
The pilot-to-scale claim belongs to a vendor. Steven Goldfeder, CEO and co-founder of Offchain, said "clear rules like this are what let platforms move from pilot to scale", and pointed to Arbitrum surpassing 5,000 real-world assets supported on the network [11][12]. Robinhood Chain is built on Arbitrum and has not tapped the US market [12].
In my view the first year of US activity goes into custody, transfer-agent and corporate-actions plumbing. The number of tokenized NMS shares that clear the rights test stays small while that is paid for. The forecast is checkable along the way. Compounding at 4.2 times a year from $17 billion puts the market near $72 billion after one year and near $306 billion after two [5]. If it is still in the low tens of billions in 2028, the $5.5 trillion was a sales figure.
What to watch
- Whether the published conditions of the SEC order match Kan's account of rights parity and the exclusion of synthetic exposure once firms file under it.
- The first US venue to claim the exemption, and whether it holds the underlying shares with a regulated custodian.
- Tokenized equity outstanding at end-2027 against the roughly $72 billion the $5.5 trillion path implies.