Blab News
Major Wall Street Firms Push Tokenized Stock Trading as Senate Stalls on CLARITY Act
BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan have each unveiled token‑ization plans for U.S. equities over the past year, while retail platforms Robinhood and Kraken already offer tokenized shares to overseas customers. The promise is simple yet powerful: 24‑hour trading, the ability to lend tokens or use them as collateral, and a potential release of capital that currently sits idle in traditional brokerage accounts.
At the heart of this shift is the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, a bipartisan bill the White House aims to have signed into law by July 4, 2026. The Act would define when a token is considered a security, giving regulators a framework to allow a blockchain‑issued token to stand in for a share of a company. The House passed the bill in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced a version in a 15‑9 vote in May. Now it sits on the Senate calendar, but its fate is uncertain amid concerns about the President’s family’s crypto ventures and a broader debate over whether officials should be barred from profiting from crypto businesses they oversee.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt set a July 4 deadline at the Consensus conference last month, but warned that “there is not a lot of slack left in the rope.” Prediction‑market prices for the bill’s passage in 2026 sit at 53 percent, barely better than a coin flip. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has cautioned that the bill may not reach the President’s desk until August. Portfolio manager David Nage of Arca notes the bill’s substance is 80‑85 percent finished, yet the remaining debate centers on conflict‑of‑interest language that has become charged by scrutiny of Trump’s family crypto activities. Nage’s base case still projects a floor vote in mid‑to‑late July, already past the White House deadline.
Opposition to the bill is not limited to political optics. Massachusetts securities regulator William Galvin has called the CLARITY Act a “recipe of disaster,” arguing that it would deregulate penny stocks and erode state investor protections. The debate has attracted attention from major market participants, including Visa and Mastercard, which each fell 5‑6 percent in a single session after the GENIUS Act set federal rules for stablecoins last year.
Tokenization is already underway. Robinhood’s tokenized stock product, launched in Europe in June 2025, lets users in 30 countries trade more than 200 U.S. equities on a Layer‑2 blockchain. The platform also runs a fast‑growing prediction‑market business, exposing it to both the regulatory risk of tokenization and the market risk of traders pricing the CLARITY Act itself. Coinbase Global is in a similar position, offering crypto products that could be affected by the bill’s outcome.
The stakes for the broader market are significant. If the CLARITY Act passes, tokenized stocks could trade around the clock, be lent out, or used as collateral, potentially freeing up capital that is currently idle in brokerage accounts. The ability to trade tokenized shares could also create new opportunities for cross‑border investors and enhance liquidity for U.S. equities. Conversely, a failure to pass the bill would leave the industry in a regulatory gray zone, limiting the growth of tokenized products and maintaining the status quo of traditional brokerage intermediaries.
As the Senate approaches the July 4 deadline, market participants and regulators are watching closely. The bill’s fate will determine whether the U.S. can fully embrace blockchain‑based securities and whether major financial institutions can expand their tokenization offerings without regulatory uncertainty. The next few weeks will see intensified lobbying, further debate over conflict‑of‑interest provisions, and potential amendments aimed at addressing concerns from state regulators and market participants. Until the bill’s status is resolved, the tokenization of U.S. stocks remains a high‑profile but uncertain development at the intersection of finance and technology.
At the heart of this shift is the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, a bipartisan bill the White House aims to have signed into law by July 4, 2026. The Act would define when a token is considered a security, giving regulators a framework to allow a blockchain‑issued token to stand in for a share of a company. The House passed the bill in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced a version in a 15‑9 vote in May. Now it sits on the Senate calendar, but its fate is uncertain amid concerns about the President’s family’s crypto ventures and a broader debate over whether officials should be barred from profiting from crypto businesses they oversee.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt set a July 4 deadline at the Consensus conference last month, but warned that “there is not a lot of slack left in the rope.” Prediction‑market prices for the bill’s passage in 2026 sit at 53 percent, barely better than a coin flip. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has cautioned that the bill may not reach the President’s desk until August. Portfolio manager David Nage of Arca notes the bill’s substance is 80‑85 percent finished, yet the remaining debate centers on conflict‑of‑interest language that has become charged by scrutiny of Trump’s family crypto activities. Nage’s base case still projects a floor vote in mid‑to‑late July, already past the White House deadline.
Opposition to the bill is not limited to political optics. Massachusetts securities regulator William Galvin has called the CLARITY Act a “recipe of disaster,” arguing that it would deregulate penny stocks and erode state investor protections. The debate has attracted attention from major market participants, including Visa and Mastercard, which each fell 5‑6 percent in a single session after the GENIUS Act set federal rules for stablecoins last year.
Tokenization is already underway. Robinhood’s tokenized stock product, launched in Europe in June 2025, lets users in 30 countries trade more than 200 U.S. equities on a Layer‑2 blockchain. The platform also runs a fast‑growing prediction‑market business, exposing it to both the regulatory risk of tokenization and the market risk of traders pricing the CLARITY Act itself. Coinbase Global is in a similar position, offering crypto products that could be affected by the bill’s outcome.
The stakes for the broader market are significant. If the CLARITY Act passes, tokenized stocks could trade around the clock, be lent out, or used as collateral, potentially freeing up capital that is currently idle in brokerage accounts. The ability to trade tokenized shares could also create new opportunities for cross‑border investors and enhance liquidity for U.S. equities. Conversely, a failure to pass the bill would leave the industry in a regulatory gray zone, limiting the growth of tokenized products and maintaining the status quo of traditional brokerage intermediaries.
As the Senate approaches the July 4 deadline, market participants and regulators are watching closely. The bill’s fate will determine whether the U.S. can fully embrace blockchain‑based securities and whether major financial institutions can expand their tokenization offerings without regulatory uncertainty. The next few weeks will see intensified lobbying, further debate over conflict‑of‑interest provisions, and potential amendments aimed at addressing concerns from state regulators and market participants. Until the bill’s status is resolved, the tokenization of U.S. stocks remains a high‑profile but uncertain development at the intersection of finance and technology.
