The company is following the steps of Prometheum, which now treats four cryptocurrencies as securities.
The United States has a second special purpose broker-dealer (SPBD) for digital asset securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) have approved tZero Digital Asset Securities as a digital asset SPBD, giving it the right to custody digital asset securities on behalf of retail and institutional clients.
Its new status allows SEC-regulated alternative trading system operator tZero to carry out custody, clearance and settlement of securities without a third-party custodian, making tZero a “one-stop shop” for digital asset security issuance and secondary trading, the company said in a statement. The company helps private companies go public through securities offerings.
tZero has a “long-standing position that many digital assets in the market constitute securities under existing legal frameworks,” it said. Although that claim is widely disputed in the crypto world, tZero will treat digital assets as securities when it provides custody of them. tZERO chief legal and corporate affairs officer Alan Konevsky said:
