00:00Scott, you were on with us just last week and talking about the latest with this. Since then,
00:04there have been some developments. What's the pushback here?
00:08Yeah, I think that the pushback is largely questions that market participants have,
00:15industry participants, traders, exchanges. Since the reporting on this has come
00:22from Bloomberg, and the SEC hasn't said anything publicly about it. So what we hear is the phones
00:32ringing off the hook at the SEC from all corners of Wall Street, and they're asking questions.
00:39There is probably some pushback, but I think right now it's more news gathering from industry,
00:47trying to figure out what the SEC is planning. And there also are some aspects of what we reported
00:52that the SEC was doing that took a lot of the industry by surprise.
00:55This is a great scoop that you had, and you followed through with a news story on Friday.
00:59And you said not all SEC officials would support a decision to allow third-party
01:03token trading. Why would someone support it, and why would someone not support it?
01:09I guess it depends on where you stand. I'm told that the Hester Peirce, Republican commissioner
01:17or the SEC, has been driving this effort to tokenize third-party securities, which are not issuer-backed.
01:27That is seen by some market participants as a bit extreme. And even some inside the SEC feel like
01:36that might be taking things a bit too far, especially in this initial wave of tokenization of securities.
01:43There are some that feel like if this move to what is essentially, you know, could be a massive change
01:50to how individuals invest in the United States, it doesn't have the explicit backing of issuers.
01:58There could be a bit of a credibility problem with the effort. So there was this initial desire to
02:06just go with issuer-backed tokens. But that changed in recent months as Peirce pushed through her vision,
02:13which is in some ways backed by an ideology of libertarianism and this idea that you should just
02:20let the market work out for itself the kinks and have a more deregulatory approach to the market.
02:30Just 30 seconds here, Scott. But my favorite quote in your story is, nobody is asking for this.
02:35What have the sentiments been like in your reporting?
02:38Yeah, that comes from a broker-dealer who talks to investors. That's Joe Saluzzi at Themis.
02:46And he's dealing with just regular investors and fund clients who are directly addressing the issue of 24-7 trading
02:59in that quote.
Comments