Perpetuals.com files to run tokenized US stock venue under SEC exemption

Perpetuals.com, a Nasdaq-listed fintech led by former FTX Europe chief Patrick Gruhn, filed a notice Wednesday to operate a tokenized securities venue under the SEC's five-year innovation exemption.

The filing makes Perpetuals.com the second company to pursue a marketplace on that route. OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange, filed last week for round-the-clock trading of more than 60 tokenized U.S. stocks.

The exemption, introduced in September, requires tokens to carry the same shareholder rights as ordinary shares, including dividends and voting rights, and gives companies 30 days to object to their shares being traded.

For Gruhn, the plan reopens a line of work that predates FTX's collapse. He co-founded Digital Assets AG, a Swiss tokenization company that worked with German investment firm CM-Equity to bring tokens linked to stocks including Tesla and Coinbase to crypto traders. FTX Group later acquired Digital Assets AG, which became part of FTX Europe, the unit Gruhn led until the exchange group's collapse in November 2022.

Perpetuals.com has a live European business: it provides trading technology for Perpetual Markets MTF, a Cyprus-based marketplace licensed under MiFID II that also received authorization under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation in August. The company reported $65.2 million in total assets at the end of April and a $17.6 million net loss for its fiscal year. The notice describes an intention to operate a U.S. securities venue rather than a launch timetable.

The IMF put tokenized U.S. stocks at roughly $2.3 billion of a $65 billion tokenized real-world-asset market as of July 31, trading 1.5 times as volatile and less liquid than the shares they track. That is the constraint both exemption filers will be measured against.