In 2026, the SEC has moved on two fronts that will define the next chapter of American public markets. On January 28, it confirmed that tokenized securities remain securities. In May, it proposed the most significant overhaul of the registered-offering framework in more than 20 years. Both are part of a story 250 years in the making.
As CEO of OTC Markets Group, which operates regulated markets for U.S. and international securities, I have a direct view into why both matter. That view is rooted in two-and-a-half centuries of market evolution.
In 1792, a handful of brokers gathered beneath a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and agreed to trade securities among themselves, a private club where prices were negotiated in person. Information moved slowly, unevenly, and often not at all. That opacity was the defining feature of early American public markets, and improving the quality and availability of information has been the central project of every generation since.
The history of American public markets is a history of expanding access.
From the New York Price Current in 1795 to our predecessor, the National Quotation Bureau, in 1911, telegraph, ticker tape, and telephone each moved information faster and widened the market.
The securities reforms of the 1930s gave that expanding market a legal foundation. Larger companies seeking public capital would register with the SEC, file financial statements, and give investors the information they needed to make rational decisions. The disclosure-based principle was clear: let investors decide the merits and value of investments. Public markets function when buyers and sellers have access to the same material facts. Without that, price discovery breaks down and capital flows to noise rather than fundamental value.
For decades, the OTC market operated largely outside that framework. The “Pink Sheets” of the mid-20th century were exactly what the name suggests: printed lists of broker-dealer daily quotations, a phone book distributed by messenger every morning, with little standardized disclosure and no electronic infrastructure.
The electronic trading revolution changed the architecture of markets. In 1971, Nasdaq launched the world’s first electronic stock quotation system, connecting OTC market makers across the country through a decentralized network and bringing real-time price transparency to thousands of securities.
The internet enabled market operators and regulators to extend that same logic from private networks for price discovery, to corporate disclosure and financial data. OTC Markets Group leveled the playing field, with a digital platform where companies publish financial information, submit to ongoing disclosure standards, and earn placement on the OTCQX Best Market or OTCQB Venture Market. In 2021, the SEC reinforced that principle, requiring that current issuer information be available before a broker-dealer posts a quote.
Today our markets facilitate trading in more than 12,000 securities. In the first half of 2026, according to OTC Markets Group data, $453 billion traded across those markets, on track to reach $900 billion for the year. International companies, cross-traded from exchanges in Tokyo, London, Toronto, Paris, and Sydney, represent nearly 95% of total dollar volume. These established global enterprises choose to access U.S. investors through a market structure designed to accommodate public companies at every stage of their journey and from every jurisdiction.
The SEC’s proposed registered-offering reform would extend that access further. By opening shelf registration and at-the-market capital-raising to roughly 81% of public companies, the proposal advances a principle this market was built on: that disclosure standards, not the size of your balance sheet or the prestige of your listing venue, should determine your access to public capital. Growth-stage companies currently forced into private placements at steep discounts and significant dilution to existing shareholders would gain a transparent, public alternative. The policy is catching up.
Every generation rewrites what a market can be. The current rewrite is about ownership itself. Digital technology could make securities programmable, connecting companies directly with a class of participants that traditional market infrastructure was never designed to reach. Still the same principles for fair dealing and materiality remain. Market operators are enabling broker-dealers to trade digital asset securities. The trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure to support it at institutional scale is being built. The work now is ensuring the transparency principles that have governed public markets for decades travel with the technology, not behind it.
Public markets work best as an ecosystem. From OTC Markets through Nasdaq to the NYSE, each market plays a role in capital formation, price discovery, and investor choice. Democracy thrives in sunlight, and capitalism goes hand in hand with the transparency and tradability of public companies, where an average citizen can own a share in the future. Democratic, disclosure-based regulation reinforces that continuum, offering graduated benefits and responsibilities as companies mature and encouraging businesses to grow in public rather than remain private.
Over two centuries of American market evolution produced a system that reaches every corner of the global economy, built on disclosure, modernized by technology, and sustained by the confidence of investors worldwide. American market dominance was never guaranteed. It was built by making room for new companies, new technologies, and new investors at every stage of the country’s economic history.
If the SEC’s shelf-registration reform is finalized, growth-stage companies currently relying on discounted, dilutive private placements will gain a public, transparent alternative for the first time in decades: a structural shift in who gets to build in public, not just a procedural one.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Hence then, the article about otc markets ceo 250 years of market history just collided with a new sec rule was published today ( ) and is available on Fortune ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( OTC Markets CEO: 250 years of market history just collided with a new SEC rule )
Also on site :
- Hairstylists Say This In-Shower Step Helps With Shedding and Scalp Issues While Encouraging Stronger, Longer Hair
- Crystal Hefner claims she was ‘brainwashed’ while married to Hugh Hefner, reveals strict Playboy mansion rules
- This Troubled Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Became ‘Drinking Buddies’ With a Beloved ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Star Before His Untimely Death at 27