Perpetuals.com Files Under SEC Innovation Exemption to Trade Tokenised US Stocks

A Nasdaq-listed fintech company, Perpetuals.com (PDC), has filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate a tokenised equities venue under the regulator’s five-year innovation exemption, which permits certain marketplaces to trade US stocks on public blockchains without registering as conventional securities exchanges. The filing makes Perpetuals.com the second firm to pursue such a venue, following OKXICE, a joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, which filed plans the previous week for round-the-clock trading in more than 60 tokenised US stocks.

Perpetuals.com is led by Patrick Gruhn, who co-founded Digital Assets AG, a Swiss tokenisation company that developed stock-linked tokens for exchanges including Binance and FTX around 2021. Digital Assets AG was subsequently acquired by FTX Group and became part of FTX Europe, which Gruhn headed until the group’s collapse in November 2022. Those earlier products offered price exposure to underlying shares but did not confer voting rights; Binance discontinued its version in July 2021 amid regulatory pressure. Under the SEC’s new framework, tokens must carry full shareholder rights, including dividends and voting entitlements, and companies have 30 days to object to having their shares traded on such a venue.

The US marketplace would be operated by Kephas Corporation, a Delaware-based subsidiary, with trading possible as early as mid-November, though the company has flagged that technical and compliance preparations remain outstanding. Perpetuals.com already runs technology for Perpetual Markets MTF, a Cyprus-based venue licensed under MiFID II that also received authorisation under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation in August. The company reported total assets of 65.2 million dollars at the end of April alongside a net loss of 17.6 million dollars for its fiscal year, and has a separate agreement with Datavault AI targeting more than 300 million dollars in tokenised commodity issuance covering copper, gold, and other physical assets.