1ชม. ที่แล้ว
SEC Floats Repeal of Reg NMS Rules 611 and 610(e), Seen as Potential Catalyst for Tokenized Stocks
On June 11, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a sweeping proposal to reshape U.S. equity market structure by rescinding two pillars of Regulation NMS: Rule 611 and Rule 610(e). The move would roll back long-standing quote-protection and quote-display constraints, giving exchanges, alternative trading systems (ATSs), and brokers more latitude in order routing, quote presentation, and execution design.
The proposal is not yet in force. Once published in the Federal Register, it will enter a 60-day public comment period.
The topic has drawn unusual interest from the Web3 community because the SEC's release explicitly notes the market's evolution toward 24/7 trading and highlights how distributed ledger technology could allow issuers to tokenize securities as crypto assets, while smart contracts and automated market makers (AMMs) could introduce new trading methods. Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn described the development as a "TradFi story," arguing it could nonetheless become a meaningful opening for tokenized equities.
What Rule 611 does
Rule 611, commonly known as the trade-through rule, can be summarized as: don't execute at an inferior displayed price when a better protected quote is accessible elsewhere, unless an exception applies. For example, if Exchange A is showing a protected best offer of $10 and Exchange B is showing $10.01, Rule 611 generally prevents a trading center from filling a buy at $10.01 on Exchange B while bypassing the $10 offer on Exchange A.
The SEC argues the market context has changed dramatically since Rule 611 was adopted in 2005. In the agency's view, today's U.S. equity market is highly automated, tightly interconnected, fast, and intensely competitive. While Rule 611 was designed to promote displayed liquidity, the SEC says trading has increasingly migrated toward non-displayed liquidity and off-exchange execution, making the market more fragmented and operationally complex.
The SEC lists several costs and unintended consequences associated with Rule 611: higher compliance expenses; fewer choices in order handling and execution; incentives to proliferate venues; greater fragmentation; and pressure on firms to spend heavily to chase ever-lower latency. The agency also points out that brokers already owe customers a best-execution duty under reasonably available conditions, suggesting Rule 611 may no longer be necessary as a parallel safeguard.
What Rule 610(e) does
Rule 610(e) addresses locked and crossed markets for National Market System (NMS) stocks. A "locked" market occurs when a bid on one venue equals an ask on another. A "crossed" market occurs when a bid exceeds an ask. On screens, locked markets can look like buyers and sellers are meeting at the same price; crossed markets can appear as a quote mismatch that, in theory, creates arbitrage opportunities.
Rule 610(e) does not ban every locked or crossed quote outright. Instead, it requires exchanges, FINRA, and other self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to adopt and enforce rules that prevent members from displaying orders that would lock or cross protected quotes, and to address such conditions when they arise. Over the past two decades, that framework has contributed to a proliferation of order types and automated price-adjustment logic designed to avoid locking or crossing.
The SEC now proposes to remove the federal requirement embodied in Rule 610(e). It argues that automation and interconnection have improved significantly since 2005 and that market participants have broader access to market data, reducing the need for this layer of mandated quote management.
The SEC highlights three main rationales:
1) Locked markets can be a natural byproduct of competitive quoting. Prohibiting them may artificially widen bid-ask spreads; allowing them could tighten spreads for certain names and reduce trading costs.
2) Existing restrictions encourage complex order types, auto-repricing features, and compliance processes, raising system complexity and maintenance burdens.
3) If crossed markets occur, high-speed trading and arbitrage incentives should help correct them quickly.
Importantly, access-fee caps would remain in place. These caps limit the fees a venue can charge outside participants to access quotes and execute trades, preventing venues from posting seemingly attractive quotes while effectively raising execution costs through excessive fees.
The SEC also acknowledges potential downsides if Rule 610(e) is rescinded. Crossed quotes could distort execution-quality statistics, quote mismatches might persist longer in less liquid stocks, and retail investors could be confused by locked or crossed quotations on their screens. The agency is requesting data and feedback during the comment process.
Why tokenized-stock advocates are watching
For Web3 market participants, the significance lies less in near-term cost savings and more in the possibility that U.S. equities trading could rely on less centralized coordination logic. Scaling tokenized stocks is not just a matter of putting share representations on-chain; the larger challenge is market structure. On-chain markets naturally support 24/7 operation, smart-contract execution, AMM or hybrid order-book models, and liquidity that can be aggregated across platforms.
By contrast, traditional U.S. equity trading is built around exchanges and brokers, quote protection, order routing, SRO rulebooks, and clearing and settlement infrastructure. Those rhythms, quoting conventions, and technical interfaces do not align cleanly with on-chain design.
Rule 611, in particular, effectively forces new trading mechanisms to be engineered around the existing protected-quote framework. If the SEC ultimately repeals it, exchanges, ATSs, and other venues could gain additional room to experiment with matching models, auctions, priority schemes, and block-trading protocols.
Even so, the proposal is narrow. It does not change securities registration requirements, nor does it address custody, clearing, shareholder rights, cross-border distribution, KYC/AML, or broker responsibilities specific to tokenized equities. Another critical point: repealing federal rules would not automatically erase related exchange and FINRA requirements; SROs would still need to decide whether and how to amend their own rulebooks.
Cost impact and the broader message
In its economic analysis of repealing Rules 611 and 610(e), the SEC estimates quantifiable annual cost savings for regulated participants of $54.2 million to $77 million. The savings would largely come from exchanges, ATSs, brokers running smart order routers, and OTC market makers no longer having to maintain compliance policies, monitoring programs, routing logic, and connectivity arrangements tied to the two rules.
The totals are not massive, but they underscore the SEC's framing: this is a market-structure simplification effort aimed at reducing rule-driven complexity and pushing venues to compete for order flow on price, speed, liquidity, and mechanism design. For tokenized stocks, that focus on "complexity" may be the key point. The promise of on-chain assets is often described as 24/7 availability, composability, and transparent settlement. If the underlying trading rule set continues to force innovation back into a quote-protection architecture built for 2005, tokenization risks becoming little more than packaging. A looser rule framework, by contrast, would shift attention to whether new venues can deliver better execution quality while staying compliant, rather than merely issuing stock-shaped tokens.
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