The US Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to rescind rules around order protections and price quotes could remove a major legal barrier for tokenized US stocks.

The SEC on Thursday proposed to scrap two rules in its national market system regulations. Rule 611 that bans “trade-throughs,” where a stock order on one exchange can’t be for a worse price than on another, and Rule 610(e) banning exchanges from displaying a bid at the same or higher price than what is available elsewhere.

Galaxy head of research Alex Thorn said the proposal is “one of the biggest unlocks yet for tokenized stocks” as it would remove “one of the biggest structural barriers to tokenized US equities trading in DeFi.”

The SEC has been looking to undo rules that restrict crypto and blockchain technology. It launched “Project Crypto” in August 2025 with the goal of making rules for the use of digital assets and blockchain in US markets.

Source: Alex Thorn

Thorn said that automated market makers (AMM) in crypto, or programs that facilitate trading by pooling assets, can’t comply with trade-through rules as they execute orders against “whatever the pool price is.”

He added that an AMM also can’t stop a trade if a better quote exists elsewhere, meaning any pool in a tokenized stock governed by the current rules “would commit trade-throughs constantly and arguably be an illegal trading center.”

Related: SEC makes digital assets strategic priority through 2030

Prices from AMMs also constantly fluctuate and would also be in constant violation of the rule aiming to guarantee investors get the best price across all platforms, Thorn said.

The SEC is likely to replace the rules with a “best execution” framework, which could permit AMMs under the rules, Thorn said.

The agency put its proposal up for feedback for 60 days, where it will then review responses and may change its proposal in response to comments.

It comes as the SEC was reportedly set to release a plan last month allowing tokenized stock trading, but postponed the plan after officials from stock exchanges raised concerns over how the plan would be executed.

Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?

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Key Highlights

• The Securities and Exchange Commission has put forward a proposal to eliminate Rules 611 and 610(e) from Regulation NMS, regulations that have shaped equity trading in the United States since 2005
• Rule 611 prohibits executing trades at inferior prices compared to the best available market quote; Rule 610(e) restricts locked or crossed quotations
• Alex Thorn from Galaxy Digital characterized this development as “one of the biggest unlocks yet” for tokenized equity trading within decentralized finance
• The structural design of automated market makers makes legal compliance with these regulations impossible, effectively barring tokenized American stocks from decentralized trading venues
• Final implementation of the regulatory change is anticipated in Q1 2027, though temporary exemptions for tokenization pilot programs may arrive earlier

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The Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled a proposal to dismantle two established stock market regulations that industry analysts argue have prevented tokenized American equities from operating on decentralized finance platforms.

These regulations — identified as 611 and 610(e) within Regulation NMS — were established in 2005. Rule 611 prevents trade execution at prices inferior to the optimal available quote across any trading venue. Rule 610(e) prohibits market venues from displaying quotations that lock or cross against quotes on competing platforms.

Chairman Paul Atkins of the SEC stated the proposal aims to “simplify market structure and reduce costs for market participants while allowing competition, innovation, and other market forces to shape the continuing evolution of our equity markets.”

The public commentary period of 60 days has commenced.

Implications for Decentralized Finance

Alex Thorn, serving as head of research at Galaxy Digital, outlined why these regulations represented an insurmountable obstacle for tokenized equity trading within cryptocurrency markets.

Automated market makers — the algorithmic systems driving decentralized exchanges — function by executing transactions against liquidity pools at current pool-determined prices. These systems lack the capability to query Nasdaq pricing. They cannot suspend a transaction due to superior pricing availability elsewhere. Under the framework of Rule 611, every transaction becomes a regulatory violation.

“Any pool in a tokenized NMS stock would commit trade-throughs constantly and arguably be an illegal trading center,” Thorn explained.

Rule 610(e) presented identical challenges. AMMs perpetually adjust pricing based on transaction flow, resulting in quotes that would regularly lock or cross the National Best Bid and Offer — activity that current regulations mandate exchanges prevent.

Future Developments

Should the regulations be eliminated, the SEC is anticipated to depend on a “best execution” framework under FINRA Rule 5310 instead. This approach is principles-oriented and applies at the broker level, making it compatible with AMM operational models.

Jaret Seiberg, who serves as managing director at TD Cowen’s Washington Research Group, indicated the proposal will likely receive approval. The rule is expected to reach finalization during Q1 2027.

However, Seiberg suggested that tokenization pilot projects may not face delays until that date. He anticipates the SEC will grant early-stage tokenization initiatives exemptive relief from Rule 611 prior to official repeal.

This regulatory proposal forms part of the SEC’s comprehensive “Project Crypto” initiative, introduced in August 2025, designed to establish more definitive regulations for digital assets and blockchain technology within American markets.

Thorn observed that additional obstacles persist, including exchange registration requirements, clearance and settlement protocols, and regulations not designed for decentralized trading environments. He indicated these matters may be resolved through an upcoming SEC “innovation exemption.”

The SEC had previously planned to unveil a tokenized stock trading framework last month but postponed the release following objections from stock exchanges regarding execution concerns.

Blockchain-based prediction markets have recently emerged as the go-to-place for investors to bet on the SpaceX IPO, offering a decentralized alternative to traditional pre-IPO markets. Unlike private equity deals that require accreditation and high minimums, these onchain markets are accessible to retail investors with minimal capital, creating 24/7 price discovery on IPO odds.

At Wednesday’s level near $157, SPCX implied only a roughly 16% premium to the $135 IPO price, down from about 60% when the contract briefly traded near $216 in May. At $183, the implied premium is back near 36%.

Other shadow markets are now pointing the same way. Bloomberg reported Friday that IG International derivatives implied a SpaceX valuation of about $2.4 trillion, more than 35% above the $1.77 trillion valuation set by the IPO price.

Elsewhere, Polymarket traders put 70% odds on SpaceX closing its first trading day above $2 trillion.

The reversal comes as pre-IPO SPCX has shown caution in the market, falling by about 30% over the past few weeks. It suggested traders still expected SpaceX to trade above the offer price, but not at the explosive premium implied by the bookbuild. And Friday’s bounce now says that discount is closing.

“To put the argument in the plainest real-world terms: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada would never have consented to or passively accepted legislation displacing an activity so critical to his state’s economy and politics by permitting sports betting only under CFTC auspices,” Gensler’s brief said.

Courts have so far been split; some have ruled in favor of prediction market providers, while others have ruled in favor of states.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that the state of New Jersey could not shut down prediction markets, but panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seemed more inclined to rule for the states.

It is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately take up the issue, and Congress is also poking around.

Amicus briefs

The CFTC, currently helmed by Chair Mike Selig, filed its own amicus brief in this case last month, arguing that any event contract traded by a designated contract market overseen by the regulator is a swap.

Congress’ definition of a swap was broad and the language in the statutes allows for the CFTC-regulated firms to offer their products, the regulator’s filing said.

Genler’s brief disagreed.

“The CFTC now posits hedging theories for some sports bets that are at best only tenuously connected to reliable hedges of commercial risks. That connection, however, is crucial, as Congress included only those event contracts that hedge risks in a manner similar to a swap and are sufficiently ‘associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence,’” Gensler’s brief said.

SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 a share and starts trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker SPCX. The $75 billion raise is the largest IPO in history. It values the company near $1.75 trillion and puts Musk on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Demand topped $250 billion, with retail orders alone above $100 billion.

Crypto took the cue higher. Bitcoin rose about 1.6% to roughly $63,550 and is now green on the week, per CoinDesk data, recovering the ground it lost in the early-June selloff. Solana added 3%, XRP and dogecoin each rose 2.3%, and Hyperliquid bounced 7.6% on the day.

Dogecoin barely stood out. It rose 2.3%, in line with the broad market. The token has spent years jumping on Musk and SpaceX headlines, and this was the biggest SpaceX event ever.

The real signal comes when SPCX prints its first trade. A strong debut confirms the risk-on turn, while a weak one tests it.

XRP bounced sharply from last week’s selloff, reclaiming $1.14 on its strongest volume in weeks. Buyers pushed the token through resistance near $1.12 and kept buying into the close, a change from the short-lived rebounds that have repeatedly faded since February.

The next test sits higher up, as every major recovery this year has stalled before reaching the $1.20-$1.25 area.

News Background

• Ripple said Bitso’s MXN-backed stablecoin MXNB will launch on the XRP Ledger and integrate with its Payments on Decentralized Exchange infrastructure, expanding regulated cross-border settlement between the U.S. and Mexico.

• Ripple’s RLUSD and Bitso’s MXNB are designed to provide on-chain dollar and peso liquidity for enterprise payment flows, adding another institutional use case for XRPL infrastructure.

• The initiative builds around XRPL’s Permissioned DEX, a framework aimed at regulated financial participants rather than retail users.

Price Action Summary

• XRP rose from $1.1080 to $1.1442 during the 24-hour session, gaining 3.3%.

• The key move came during the June 11 17:00 UTC session, when volume surged to 120.2 million XRP, more than 160% above average, pushing price through resistance near $1.1220.

LG Electronics has teamed with Ethereum layer-2 Arbitrum to explore a blockchain-powered advertising network designed to streamline the buying, selling, and tracking of digital ad inventory. Fortune reported on Thursday that the collaboration aims to provide a shared database for advertisers and publishers and to automate how audiences interact with ads, with a potential market rollout this year.

“We are evaluating whether this approach can deliver meaningful value to advertisers, publishers and audiences,” said Samuel Byungsun Park, head of LG Electronics’ blockchain research lab. The venture, still in the exploration stage, underscores a broader push within the tech industry to apply blockchain and automation to the sprawling digital advertising ecosystem.

Arbitrum would supply the network’s backbone—an automated, software-driven system intended to reduce reliance on traditional intermediaries that currently mediate ad buys between brands and publishers. By consolidating inventory data and consumer interaction signals on a blockchain-based ledger, the partners hope to provide greater transparency and efficiency for buyers and sellers alike. As Steven Goldfeder, Arbitrum’s co-founder, put it to Fortune, the goal is to enable markets to operate in an automated fashion, reducing the need for manual intervention.

On the market reaction, Arbitrum’s token ARB rose about 5.44% on Thursday in response to the news of the collaboration and the broader Layer-2 development it represents. Arbitrum confirmed the update on X, underscoring momentum around the network as it expands into new usage scenarios beyond its core scaling role for Ethereum.

Cointelegraph reached out to both Arbitrum and LG Electronics for comment on the initiative and its timing.

LG has long explored cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, testing the waters with internal ventures and consumer-facing products. In 2018, LG CNS, the company’s solutions arm, launched its own blockchain platform called Monachain, aimed at business-to-business use cases such as digital authentication, payments and supply chain management. More recently, LG Electronics built a decentralized wallet called Wallypto on the Hedera Hashgraph network, designed to accompany the LG Art Lab NFT platform that showcased digital artworks on televisions. The NFT project was shut down in June 2025, part of a broader wave of NFT marketplace closures that year, and LG subsequently terminated Wallypto in September 2025.

The evolving LG crypto portfolio reflects a cautious, testing approach rather than a full-scale pivot. The company’s history highlights both the potential for big-tech players to innovate in digital advertising through blockchain-enabled networks and the practical challenges that accompany consumer-facing crypto products in a fast-changing market.

Key takeaways

• LG Electronics and Arbitrum are jointly exploring a blockchain-enabled advertising network intended to unify ad inventory and automate measurement of audience interactions, potentially reducing reliance on traditional intermediaries.
• The project could reach market within the year, according to Fortune, with Arbitrum providing the shared data backbone and automation.
• ARBI’s token rose about 5.44% on Thursday following the news, reflecting investor interest in Layer-2 applications expanding beyond scaling Ethereum.
• Digital ad spend is enormous and growing; global estimates place 2025 spend at around $679 billion, representing roughly two-thirds of total ad expenditure, which helps explain why advertisers are watching blockchain-enabled ad networks closely.
• LG’s crypto experiments show a pattern of methodical exploration: Monachain (2018), Wallypto on Hedera, and the LG Art Lab NFT platform, with mixed outcomes and eventual pivots or shutdowns in later years.

LG, Arbitrum and the ad-tech disruption thesis

The collaboration between LG Electronics and Arbitrum sits at the intersection of two big trends in crypto and tech: enterprise-scale adoption of blockchain for operational efficiency, and the ongoing transformation of digital advertising through data transparency and automation. By offering a shared ledger of ad inventory and audience interactions, the envisioned network could in theory reduce duplication of data across platforms, lower reconciliation costs, and provide advertisers with clearer insight into reach and effectiveness.

On the efficiency front, the promise is straightforward: automate the core processes that currently require human oversight and multiple middlemen. In the traditional ad-tech stack, agencies, exchanges, networks, and data providers orchestrate ad placements and measurement, often resulting in opaque pathways and higher costs. A blockchain-backed approach could, in theory, give advertisers and publishers a single source of truth and faster settlement, while enabling more granular targeting and measurable outcomes.

However, the venture also hinges on practical considerations. Adoption by marketers and publishers, integration with existing demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs), data privacy compliance, and the ability to scale across ecosystems are all critical factors. The Fortune report notes the initiative is in the evaluation stage, with a possible market introduction later in 2026, but concrete product details and governance models remain to be announced.

From an investor perspective, the immediate reaction is twofold. First, there is interest in the potential efficiency gains and transparency benefits that blockchain could deliver to an ad market long plagued by friction and opaque metrics. Second, there is caution about execution risk and the challenge of achieving broad industry-wide adoption, given the inertia of established ad-tech stacks and the regulatory environment governing data usage and online advertising.

LG’s crypto journey: lessons from a cautious, experimental approach

LG’s longer association with crypto and blockchain has been characterized by measured experimentation rather than a rapid pivot to consumer products. The 2018 Monachain project positioned LG CNS to showcase enterprise blockchain capabilities, including digital authentication and supply chain use cases. The Wallypto wallet, built on Hedera Hashgraph, served as a companion tool for the LG Art Lab NFT platform, which was designed to display digital artworks on LG televisions. The NFT platform was shuttered in June 2025, amid the broader NFT market retrenchment, and Wallypto was terminated in September of the same year.

These moves illustrate LG’s willingness to explore crypto-related technologies while maintaining a cautious portfolio approach. The current advertising network project with Arbitrum signals a shift toward applying blockchain to core business operations—advertising and marketing—where the potential for efficiency gains and new data paradigms could be significant if the project proves scalable and broadly adopted.

Industry observers will be watching how the LG-Arbitrum initiative addresses critical questions: What governance mechanisms and data-sharing rules will be used? How will user privacy and consent be handled? What performance benchmarks will define success for advertisers and publishers? And, perhaps most importantly, will a blockchain-enabled ad network achieve the level of transparency and automation needed to displace parts of the traditional ad-tech stack?

What comes next for blockchain-enabled advertising

As with any frontier technology in advertising, the path from concept to widespread adoption is likely to be incremental. The LG-Arbitrum project provides a concrete example of large corporate experimentation with blockchain to reimagine a principal revenue driver: digital advertising. While the exact rollout timeline remains uncertain, the partnership underscores a broader industry interest in leveraging distributed ledgers to streamline data flows, cut costs, and offer clearer metrics for advertisers and publishers alike.

Investors and industry participants should monitor how this initiative progresses alongside ongoing regulatory developments around data privacy, consumer consent, and platform interoperability. If the early signs hold—transparent inventory, automated market operation, and measurable efficiency gains—the collaboration could become a notable case study in how big-tech brands collaborate with specialized Layer-2 networks to reshape ad tech.

For readers, the next milestones to watch are concrete product milestones, governance models, and any pilot deployments with participating brands or publishers. As with many blockchain-at-scale experiments, real-world traction will determine whether this remains an exploratory project or becomes a reproducible blueprint for the future of digital advertising.

LG Electronics and Arbitrum declined to comment further beyond the statements already shared with Fortune and other outlets, and the industry will be awaiting more details as they become available.