Dinari CEO: SEC tokenization exemption opens door to asset-settled perps on US stocks

SEC exemption mirrors Dinari's model and unlocks new trading structures

Gabriel Otte, co-founder and CEO of Dinari, reacted to the SEC's new tokenization innovation exemption by saying he "couldn't have written it better" himself. He says the exemption requires KYC, meaning it is not a permissionless system, and it supports trading venues for tokenized stocks. The bigger surprise to him was that the SEC "cut out synthetics altogether," reinforcing the idea that tokenized stock must carry the same rights and exposure as owning the underlying stock directly.

Otte says this validation means Dinari's dShares can now be traded on compliant DeFi venues in ways that were previously unavailable, even though Dinari is already live in the US. He frames the exemption as a pilot the SEC is using to test how far onchain features can go without violating existing investor protections, calling it a needle regulators have to thread between innovation and preserving capital markets.

Among the new possibilities he highlights is direct ticker-to-ticker swaps, such as trading Apple stock directly for Nvidia stock, which he says "doesn't happen today" and raises open questions about tax treatment versus cash-settled intermediary trades. He also says asset-settled perpetuals on US equities are now possible, describing a scenario where someone could buy Nvidia stock onchain, borrow against it atomically, and put it into perps, calling the combination "insane" and something he would not have thought possible a year ago.

I think the surprises to me cuz we knew it was going to be KYC... I think for me the surprise was like they just cut out synthetics altogether.

Transfer agent modernization seen as complementary, not competitive

Discussion turned to a rumored transfer agent modernization that could let transfer agents become issuers of tokenized securities without needing a broker-dealer license, unlike Dinari, which holds FINRA registration, a broker-dealer license, and a transfer agent license. Otte says this does not threaten Dinari's business because the national market system, where Dinari operates, can coexist with transfer-agent-minted asset classes outside it.

He notes the exemption explicitly says issuer buy-in is not required, though issuers retain a kind of veto power; issuer buy-in, when present, could enable permissionless trading outside the national market system. He argues issuer-sponsored models face a scaling problem since they must work issuer by issuer, and believes "99% of people engaging with the capital markets" do not care about permissionless features, leaving most activity under broker-dealer structures regardless.

On where this ultimately lands, Otte says the SEC is balancing freedom of access against protections like SIPC insurance, the broker-equivalent of FDIC coverage, and will not dismantle those protections overnight. He closes by saying nothing changes in Dinari's strategy, since the company's "conviction has always been upgrade the capital markets without taking away rights for the end user," and he sees the SEC's exemption as backing that approach.

You can't take away rights and there is a way to tokenize without taking away those rights while bringing all the modernization forward.