SEC Proposes Transfer Agent Rule, Sets Stage for Round-the-Clock Trading

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is making two significant moves that could impact the crypto sector. On Tuesday, the regulator announced the agenda and participants for its upcoming roundtable on 24-hour trading, which will bring together major securities names, including NYSE, Nasdaq, State Street, Citadel Securities, Cboe, DTCC, and others.

The roundtable, set to take place on September 17 at the SEC's Washington headquarters, will discuss how to approach overnight surveillance, closing-price practices, and the clearing and settling of trades. The event is seen as a step towards enabling round-the-clock trading in traditional markets, which could have implications for crypto broker-dealers.

Also announced on Tuesday was the SEC's proposed new transfer-agent rule, aimed at modernizing the role to include blockchain technology and other innovations. Transfer agents are firms that track the changing ownership of securities, but the rise of tokenized securities has disrupted this process.

The proposed rule would allow the use of blockchains as official records of transactions and introduce new controls on the firms' operations, including cybersecurity measures. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce raised a key question about whether transfer agents should continue to collect names and physical addresses or if other identifiers like email and digital wallet addresses could be used instead.