“I believe that tokenization holds the potential to help the securities industry achieve a real-time inventory management, which could drive efficiency, reduce settlement failures, mitigate the risk of abusive naked short selling, with the goal of eliminating that possibility altogether,” Atkins said. “Therefore, I’ve asked the staff to consider what steps can be taken to dovetail a growth-friendly environment with protections against harmful market behavior.”

Moving the U.S. securities markets beyond their weekday, daytime tradition will involve significant adjustments, Atkins and other SEC commissioners admitted, though Commissioner Hester Peirce noted, “Crypto markets certainly don’t sleep.”

Peirce said that firms may be concerned that…