Kimber Digital Securities secures onchain broker-dealer license

Kimber Digital Securities said it has secured broker-dealer approval to handle tokenized U.S. securities onchain, giving the Plume-affiliated group a regulated channel for activity that would otherwise be routed around U.S. rules. The approval adds a brokerage function to a stack that already includes KDS’s status as an SEC-registered transfer agent and the group’s vault operations in Bermuda.

KDS was already registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a transfer agent. In practical terms, a transfer agent maintains the official ownership ledger for a security, records shareholders and processes changes in ownership. Combining that role with broker-dealer status lets one affiliated entity cover both record administration and the trading side of a tokenized security’s lifecycle.

Assets reportedly in scope include tokenized private credit and treasuries from issuers such as Apollo and WisdomTree. KDS also plans to embed anti-money-laundering controls and sanctions screening directly into the trading flow for U.S. securities tokens. Placing those checks inside execution brings compliance into the operating path rather than leaving it outside the workflow.

What does the license change for tokenized securities?

KDS can now broker tokenized securities through a regulated U.S. channel while retaining its transfer-agent role. The structure allows one affiliated entity to cover shareholder records, ownership changes, transaction execution and compliance screening. For issuers, that reduces the number of regulated interfaces involved in the administrative and trading lifecycle of a tokenized security, while the broader model remains designed around onchain distribution.

The license creates a regulated bridge between tokenized distribution and conventional securities handling. It does not by itself announce a token launch, and the commercial effect remains prospective. The immediate operational test is whether more traditional issuers bring assets through KDS and whether Plume’s distributed asset value and project count continue to rise.

Plume supplies the distribution layer around that path. The network officially launched its mainnet in June 2025, and by March 2026 had recorded more than $350 million in distributed asset value and more than 220 tokenization projects. Many of those projects use Nest, Plume’s vault protocol for packaging tokenized assets.

The regulated stack

A Bermuda affiliate holds a Class M Digital Asset license, which permits the affiliate to operate as a regulated onchain vault operator. In combination with KDS’s U.S. transfer-agent and broker-dealer capabilities, the group now spans record-keeping, brokerage and vault infrastructure across two jurisdictions. Bermuda covers the vault side; the United States covers transfer agency and brokerage.

General Counsel Salman Banaei leads the legal effort to combine U.S. securities regulation with Plume’s onchain architecture. His background includes work at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and he testified before Congress on tokenization in March 2026.

The marketplace gap

KDS is working toward registration as an onchain Alternative Trading System, or ATS. An ATS is a regulated venue that matches securities buyers and sellers without becoming a full national securities exchange. If approved, that status would give KDS a sanctioned marketplace layer on top of its ledger and brokerage functions.

Until then, KDS can broker tokenized securities but does not operate its own sanctioned onchain venue for matching trades. The distinction is operational: the firm can serve as the regulated broker while a separate ATS registration remains necessary before it can run the matching venue itself.

The firm also wants its services to remain non-custodial and DeFi-composable. Under that design, users retain control of their assets rather than transferring possession to an intermediary, and tokenized securities can connect to other onchain applications, including lending markets and vaults.

No specific token launch or measurable price move has been tied to the approval, leaving any market impact prospective rather than demonstrated. The next signals are whether more traditional issuers bring assets through KDS, whether Plume’s distributed asset value and project count keep climbing, and whether the ATS application turns from a goal into an approval.

Until ATS registration lands, the market-structure change remains a regulated brokerage channel rather than an operating exchange; approval would move KDS into the regulated matching-venue layer itself.