T7X said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved its application to operate as a registered transfer agent. The approval would move the firm from providing tokenization software to performing a regulated back-office function at the core of securities markets.
Transfer agents are responsible for maintaining an issuer’s official securityholder records—tracking changes in ownership, issuing and cancelling certificates where applicable, and supporting distributions and other “corporate actions” such as dividends, votes and shareholder communications. The SEC has long treated the function as critical market plumbing because transfer agents sit between issuers and investors and help ensure accurate, up-to-date ownership records.
T7X framed the registration as the operational trigger for what it calls its “RWA Launchpad,” a product suite aimed at issuing and administering tokenized versions of private equity, debt and real estate. In its announcement, the company argued that tokenization’s biggest bottleneck has been legal enforceability—ensuring the digital ledger maps cleanly onto a legally recognized capitalization table and record of ownership.
“We view this regulatory milestone as the catalyst for a fundamental re-architecture of global value exchange,” Pablo Penaloza, T7X’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Why a transfer agent matters in tokenization
In traditional markets, ownership is represented through a web of broker-dealer records, custodians and registrars. In tokenized securities, the promise is that a blockchain-based token can represent an investor’s claim on an underlying asset, with transfers settling more quickly and with more automation.
But institutional use cases tend to run into a non-negotiable question: what is the legally authoritative record of ownership? In the U.S., for most securities structures, that typically remains a regulated books-and-records function—precisely where transfer agents come in. The SEC notes that registered transfer agents must meet recordkeeping and operational requirements, and they face ongoing reporting obligations, including annual activity reporting on Form TA-2 for firms registered as of year-end.
That’s one reason several tokenization-focused platforms have pursued transfer agent status over the past few years. Securitize, for example, has said it registered as a transfer agent in 2019, and has positioned that license as central to compliant issuance and administration of digital securities.
T7X is effectively arguing it can now offer a similar “compliance layer”—pairing blockchain settlement rails with a federally regulated recordkeeping function.
A market splitting into “compliant rails” vs experimentation
The timing also reflects a broader shift in how large institutions approach tokenization. After years of pilots, major financial firms have increasingly focused on regulated implementations—tokenized cash equivalents, funds and collateral workflows designed to plug into existing legal frameworks rather than bypass them,
BlackRock’s tokenized money-market-style fund, BUIDL, launched in March 2024 and invests in cash, Treasury bills and repos, with tokens representing investor interests on-chain.
Franklin Templeton has also operated blockchain-integrated fund recordkeeping through its Benji/FOBXX structure, and disclosures around the product describe how blockchain-based recording can coexist with traditional regulated fund structures.
In other words, the institutional playbook has increasingly looked like tokenization with regulated roles intact—transfer agents, custodians, broker-dealers and fund administrators—rather than tokenization as a purely crypto-native activity.
What T7X says it will do next
T7X described the transfer agent designation as enabling it to “issue and manage tokenized securities” while keeping the on-chain ledger aligned with SEC-compliant ownership records.
The firm also emphasized investor protections it says are strengthened by operating under SEC reporting and recordkeeping requirements, including clearer ownership reconciliation and better-controlled processing of dividends, votes and communications—areas where operational errors can create legal and financial disputes.
The company did not, in the announcement, disclose client names, assets already onboarded, or a timeline for scaled issuance volumes. The transfer agent registration, by itself, does not automatically authorize secondary trading—separate registrations and permissions typically govern broker-dealer activity and alternative trading systems.
Haven: a glimpse of where demand may be building
The push for compliant tokenization infrastructure is also being pulled by newer projects trying to put “real-world yield” on-chain—particularly Treasury-linked products that resemble money-market exposure rather than volatile crypto tokens.
One example is Haven, which says it is building an on-chain fixed-income marketplace for real-world assets and has already launched a U.S. Treasury product designed to deliver treasury-backed yield on-chain.
Haven recently completed a seed funding round “at a US$30 million valuation,” naming Candaq, Apus Capital, ZC Capital and BlockPulse Digital Asset Management as backers.
Why it matters: products like Haven’s illustrate the industry’s pivot from speculative token launches toward income-bearing, institution-adjacent instruments—but they also highlight why regulated market roles are becoming central again. If tokenized fixed income is going to scale beyond crypto-native users, issuers and platforms need structures that can satisfy legal ownership standards, corporate action mechanics and investor disclosures.
The bigger question: does regulation become a moat?
For the tokenization sector, T7X’s move SIGNIFIES a theme that has been building for several years: regulatory status is increasingly less of a checkbox and more of a competitive differentiator.
As tokenized funds and Treasuries grow—helped by market demand for yield-bearing, blockchain-settled instruments—the firms that can credibly connect blockchains to legally recognized ownership records may be the ones that win institutional mandates. There have been other initiatives on tokenized Treasury and money-market outside the U.S. as well, reflecting how jurisdictions are racing to create regulated on-chain wrappers for traditional assets.
For T7X, the key test will be whether transfer agent status translates into issuer adoption—and whether the firm can build a pipeline of tokenized deals that are not just technically functional, but operationally and legally robust enough for institutions that have historically avoided the sector’s gray areas.
The next phase in tokenization is less about novelty, and more about who can run the boring, regulated machinery that makes ownership real.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were drafted with the assistance of AI tools and subsequently reviewed, edited, and verified by the author and our editorial team to ensure accuracy and journalistic integrity. The final version reflects human editorial judgment and fact-checking.
