SEC Approves First Tokenized Treasury STO Under New Registered Offerings Framework

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday approved BlackRock's BUIDL-II tokenized U.S. Treasury fund as the first security token offering cleared through the agency's new Rule 195 registered offerings framework. The approval marks the end of a three-year regulatory limbo for institutional-grade on-chain securities in the United States.

What changed

Rule 195, adopted in February, allows qualifying digital securities to be registered under a streamlined disclosure regime provided they meet five conditions:

• Bearer-format restrictions at the protocol level
• Verified on-chain transfer-agent infrastructure
• Daily NAV attestation via a registered auditor
• Sub-24-hour redemption in USD
• Real-time cap-table reconciliation with the SEC's EDGAR-2 portal

BlackRock's filing, available on EDGAR as of 7:14 a.m. ET, demonstrates compliance with all five. The token — deployed to both Ethereum mainnet and a dedicated appchain — now sits at the intersection of the most traditional asset in finance and the most contested regulatory vocabulary in crypto.

The quiet part

"We view this approval as a template, not an exception," said Commissioner Hester Peirce in the dissent-free 5-0 vote statement. The language was unusually warm.

"Tokenization is not a narrative. It is an operational upgrade. Today's approval treats it that way." — H. Peirce, SEC

Several other filings — Franklin Templeton's BENJI-II, WisdomTree's WTIP, and a rumored Fidelity wrapper — are believed to be in late-stage review. Sources close to the staff suggest the next approval could come within weeks.