Paxos announced on May 28, 2026 that its subsidiary, Paxos Securities Settlement Company (PSSC), has been registered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a clearing agency - the first blockchain-native firm to receive that designation. The registration grants PSSC authority to operate as a central securities depository (CSD) for traditional U.S. equities, putting it on the same legal footing as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which has held a near-monopoly on post-trade infrastructure for decades. CoinDesk reported the news on May 29, 2026 at 12:28 PM ET.
The registration is the endpoint of a seven-year regulatory arc. The SEC granted Paxos no-action relief in 2019, which allowed the firm to run a live clearing pilot starting in February 2020. That pilot ran daily U.S. equity settlements with Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and Societe Generale on blockchain rails, operating under a temporary exemption rather than full registration. The SEC's formal response to Paxos came on March 11, 2026, per SEC filing 34-104977. The formal public announcement arrived Thursday.
With full CSD registration, PSSC can settle eligible securities on the same day or near-instantly, bypassing the T+1 cycle that became the U.S. standard in 2024. In traditional markets, a stock trade executes in milliseconds but ownership does not legally transfer until the DTCC settles it - typically by end of next business day. Faster settlement frees locked collateral and reduces counterparty risk for institutional participants. Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla said the registration "allows us to offer the most complete infrastructure for our partners to continue evolving with the market and blockchain technology."
Paxos already operates white-label infrastructure for PayPal, Mastercard, Interactive Brokers, and Mercado Libre, and holds prudential licenses from the OCC in the United States, Singapore's MAS, and Europe's FIN-FSA. The CSD registration bundles regulated stock clearing with that existing stack, giving institutional partners a single regulated pipeline from tokenization through settlement.
The DTCC is not going anywhere immediately. Institutional adoption at scale requires custodians, prime brokers, and asset managers to integrate with PSSC's rails alongside or instead of DTCC connections - an operational lift that takes years, not months. Paxos's pilot partners demonstrated technical feasibility; commercial uptake at market-wide scale is a different question. Still, the registration removes the one regulatory blocker that previously made blockchain settlement a proof-of-concept rather than a production choice for U.S. equities.
For the real-world asset tokenization sector, the significance is structural. A regulated clearing layer for U.S. equities on blockchain infrastructure means the full post-trade stack - issuance, custody, trading, and now clearing - can run on-chain under SEC oversight. That closes the last institutional gap that tokenized equity markets have cited for years.
Sources: Paxos newsroom, May 28, 2026; SEC filing 34-104977, March 11, 2026; CoinDesk, May 29, 2026, 12:28 PM ET.