Planning to Run a TSV? Five Decisions Before You Commit

A Tokenized Securities Venue gives eligible participants a place to trade qualifying tokenized stocks through permissioned automated market maker pools. Running one means bringing together participant access, committed capital, trading infrastructure and ongoing operations.

These five decisions provide a starting point.

1. What investor need will your first market serve?

Start with the participant you want to serve and the trade they need to make.

Which stock token will they buy or sell? What order sizes matter to them? Through which application will they access the market? What price reference will help you assess the execution they receive?

“Provide liquidity for tokenized stocks” leaves the product undefined. A first-market brief should describe a specific service: an eligible participant trading a named asset pair, at an intended size, under stated operating conditions.

Include the selling journey. A market that supports the initial purchase still needs a plan for investors seeking an exit.

This decision shapes the capital requirement, infrastructure choices and tests needed before launch.

2. Which organizations will perform the venue functions?

A TSV may involve a tokenization platform, a trading interface, verification providers, liquidity partners and infrastructure vendors. Some organizations may perform several roles.

Map the functions each party will actually perform. Identify who sets access standards, selects the trading pools, controls market parameters and holds authority to stop trading. Document who can change those arrangements.

The SEC’s framework defines a TSV through the functions it performs, including providing AMM pools and setting participant-access standards. Your operating model needs to account for that functional scope. Read the SEC’s TSV announcement.

Before choosing vendors, establish which responsibilities your organization intends to own and which require a partner. Assign an accountable party to every critical function.

3. Who will commit the capital?

Every trade requires someone to supply the assets on the other side.

Identify who provides the stock tokens and payment asset, how much capital they will commit, what exposure they accept and when they can withdraw.

Then consider what happens after trading changes those balances. Sustained buying reduces stock inventory. Sustained selling consumes payment assets. The capital arrangement needs to explain how either side can be replenished, at what cost and within what time.

A liquidity provider also needs an economic reason to remain. Agree how fees, inventory exposure, management expenses and replenishment costs will be assessed.

Before proceeding, establish whether a capital partner accepts the proposed service and its economics. That commitment is a launch dependency.

4. Who will run the market after launch?

Name the people responsible for ordinary operations and exceptions.

Who investigates a deterioration in quotes? Who responds when reference data becomes stale? Who resolves a delayed inventory delivery? Who maintains disclosures and records? Who can authorize a restart after trading stops?

Agree coverage hours, escalation paths and decision authority with each operating partner. Establish who takes over when a key person is unavailable.

Automation also needs defined authority. Specify which actions software may execute, the limits it must observe and the conditions that require human intervention.

These decisions help your team assess the ongoing staffing and service-provider commitments behind the venue.

5. What evidence will justify opening the market?

Agree launch criteria before the pilot begins.

The pilot should demonstrate the intended participant journey, quotes at target buy and sell sizes, effective access restrictions, inventory recovery within agreed limits, and interruption and restart procedures. It should also produce records the responsible teams can retrieve and reconcile.

Keep technical acceptance and regulatory readiness visible as separate workstreams. A successful transaction is evidence about one execution path; the launch decision needs evidence across the proposed operation.

Record unresolved issues, assign owners and state which issues prevent launch. Steer’s TSV operating guide provides a deeper framework for planning that implementation and pilot.

Bring Steer your first-market brief

Steer provides infrastructure for liquidity management and supported execution workflows. The first discussion should establish how those components fit your proposed market and what integration work remains.

Bring your asset pair, intended participants, target order sizes, capital partner and responsibility map. Identify the decisions already made and the dependencies still open.

Planning to run a TSV? Talk to Steer to scope the liquidity infrastructure and pilot for your first market.