Crypto on the Nasdaq?

Olivia Capozzalo & Denis Omelchenko
September 03, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

A new joint statement from divisions of the SEC and CFTC says regulated exchanges can offer spot trading of “certain” cryptocurrencies

In other news:

Ondo debuts tokenized stocks on Ethereum
Pudgy Penguins game tops App Store charts
L1 Sonic to fund S treasury and ETF
DOGE is getting a treasury
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📈 Markets in the Last 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$111,749	0.10 %
Ethereum	$4,451.39	1.86 %
XRP	$2.87	1.16 %
BNB	$859.32	0.98 %
Solana	$211.4	3.41 %

Today’s Big Story

Breaking Barriers? CFTC, SEC Joint Statement Offers Green Light for Mainstream Crypto Trading

gm Defiers!

As the crypto industry celebrates the expanding trend of tokenizing stocks, traditional stock and derivatives exchanges, like the NYSE, Nasdaq, and CBOE, are gearing up to offering crypto trading directly — possibly very soon.

Yesterday, in a rare case of unity, staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a joint statement, clarifying that SEC- and CFTC-registered exchanges are not prohibited from facilitating trading in “certain spot crypto asset products,” marking a U-turn from the cautious approach U.S. regulators had previously taken.

As CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham noted in a Tuesday press release, “under the prior administration, our agencies sent mixed signals about regulation and compliance in digital asset markets, but the message was clear: innovation was not welcome.” She added that the chapter of ambiguity “is over” now.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins echoed that sentiment in a separate release, saying market participants “should have the freedom to choose where they trade spot crypto assets.”

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, general counsel at crypto firm StarkWare and former chief legal officer at a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse for derivatives, noted in an X post today that “one of the biggest issues with spot crypto under Gensler was HOW to trade these products, where, & who was regulating them,” adding that the announced clarity is “massive for crypto trading.”

Put simply, spot crypto listed on NYSE, Nasdaq, or CBOE could soon access roughly $600 billion in daily trading volume across all three exchanges. For comparison, Binance, the largest centralized crypto exchange, generates around $21 billion in daily volume, according to CoinGecko data.

While this latest statement from the agencies is technically just a joint staff directive, it still sets a precedent and offers a major green light for markets. The thing is, ETFs concentrate capital only within pooled funds. U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, for example, currently account for roughly $170 billion in assets under management, or just 6.3% of the combined $2.7 trillion market value of BTC and ETH, according to CoinGecko and SoSoValue data.

Routing even a few percentage points of those pools into regulated markets could release an unprecedented amount of cash into the crypto market, fundamentally changing price discovery and the mechanics of liquidity provision.

However, technically speaking, there’s still a long path ahead as exchanges will need to file rules, resolve custody and clearing arrangements, and satisfy market-structure requirements, which would likely take weeks if not months.

Until then, “crypto exchanges” will remain a separate concept, our own special niche.

Denis Omelchenko, staff reporter at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

The Future of Finance is Tokenized: Ondo’s Vision for RWAs

In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sat down with Ian De Bode, Chief Strategy Officer at Ondo Finance. The conversation dives into the future of tokenized RWAs, and democratizing access to financial markets for a global audience. Ian also shares insights into Ondo's tokenized equities platform (which just launched today), their innovative approach to liquidity and pricing, and the broader implications of regulatory clarity for the RWA space.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

Ondo Finance Launches Tokenized US Stocks on Ethereum On-chain RWA platform Ondo Finance debuted its platform for tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on Ethereum. The platform currently supports access to more than 100 tokenized stocks and ETFs, with plans to reach more than 1,000 by the end of the year. Also today, non-custodial wallet Trust Wallet announced it was integrating Ondo’s platform. Why it matters: Ondo is one of the latest movers in the growing tokenized equity space, emerging as competition to other on-chain equity products, like xStocks from Kraken and Backed Finance.
Pudgy Penguins' New Mobile Game Tops Apple Store Charts Beloved NFT collection Pudgy Penguins’ new mobile game, Pudgy Party, has skyrocketed to become the top-ranked mobile racing app in Apple's App Store. The game was launched on Friday, Aug. 29, and marks the latest activation of the brand’s IP. Why it matters: Pudgy Party integrates blockchain in a way the developers designed to be a seamless part of gameplay. Having a web3 game at the top of iOS charts means more people are being onboarded to crypto, even if they don’t know it.

Sonic Passes $150 Million Proposal to Issue Tokens for DAT and ETF Layer 1 blockchain Sonic, formerly Fantom, has passed a proposal to form Sonic USA, which will deploy $150 million worth of S tokens to fund an S ETF and digital asset treasury, offering traditional investors exposure to Sonic. Why it matters: Sonic has become the latest blockchain protocol to abandon its pursuit of decentralization and cozy up to U.S traditional finance, offering exposure to its S token via traditional products like ETFs and stocks.

Elon Musk’s Lawyer to Lead First Dogecoin Treasury Company More than four years after Elon Musk mentioned DOGE on Saturday Night Live, the billionaire’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, is transforming a publicly traded sanitation company into a digital asset treasury company — for Dogecoin. Why it matters: The firm is the latest to jump on the crypto treasury bandwagon, a strategy onlookers and analysts are increasingly concerned is a bubble waiting to burst.