Plume’s legal counsel testified before Congress, urging the SEC to accelerate rulemaking for tokenization and move DeFi protocol ATS registrations forward

Gate News message, March 28, Plume legal counsel B. Salman Banaei, in testimony before Congress, strongly urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to accelerate the development of tokenization rules, while also pushing the complete ATS (alternative trading system) registration process for DeFi protocols, rather than relying solely on an “innovation exemption” mechanism. Banaei criticized the SEC for “putting all its eggs in one basket of the innovation exemption,” calling it “stupid,” and warned that setting trading volume and product limits would not attract large institutions, “because institutions won’t invest resources in infrastructure that might not exist after two or three years.” He advised the SEC to solicit public input regarding the parts of the current rules that are incompatible and to develop a permanent solution. Plume was approved by the SEC in October 2025 to serve as a registered transfer agent, able to handle shareholder records, transfers, and dividend allocations for on-chain tokenized securities, and is currently awaiting approval of FINRA broker license. Banaei noted that the current SEC leadership window has only 10 months left, and action must be taken as soon as possible to advance real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.