Kimber Digital Securities secures broker-dealer license for onchain US assets

Tokenization has long had a paperwork problem. Kimber Digital Securities (KDS) just took care of a large piece of it.

The firm, affiliated with Kimber Labs and the Plume blockchain network, has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It also won membership approval from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra). Together, those approvals make it a licensed broker-dealer.

What the license actually unlocks

Think of a broker-dealer as the licensed middleman of American securities markets. If you want to legally arrange trades in regulated securities for customers, you generally need this status. You also need it to answer to both the SEC and Finra, the industry’s self-regulatory watchdog.

KDS now has both. That gives Plume’s ecosystem a regulated channel for handling tokenized US securities rather than routing around the rules.

The broker-dealer approval also stacks on top of a credential KDS already held. The firm was already an SEC-registered transfer agent.

A transfer agent is essentially the official record-keeper of who owns a security. It tracks shareholders and processes changes in ownership. Pairing that role with broker-dealer status means one affiliated entity can cover both the ledger and the trading side of a tokenized security’s life cycle.

The assets in scope reportedly include tokenized private credit and treasuries from issuers such as Apollo and WisdomTree.

KDS also plans to embed compliance checks directly into the trading flow. Those include anti-money laundering (AML) controls and sanctions screening for US securities tokens.

The Plume backdrop

Plume officially launched its mainnet in June 2025. Since then, the network has recorded over $350 million in distributed asset value.

It has also logged over 220 tokenization projects as of March 2026. Many of those run through Nest, Plume’s vault protocol for packaging tokenized assets.

KDS is not Plume’s only regulated arm. A Bermuda affiliate holds a Class M Digital Asset license, which allows it to operate as a regulated onchain vault operator.

So the group now has a regulated footprint in two jurisdictions. Bermuda covers the vault side, and the US covers transfer agency and broker-dealer activity.

Leading the legal effort is General Counsel Salman Banaei, whose background includes experience at the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Banaei testified before Congress on tokenization in March 2026.

Not done yet: the ATS question

The broker-dealer license is a milestone, not the finish line. KDS is working toward registration as an onchain Alternative Trading System (ATS).

An ATS is a regulated venue where buyers and sellers of securities get matched, without being a full national exchange. If KDS secures that status, it would add a sanctioned marketplace layer to the ledger and brokerage roles it already holds.

The firm also says it wants to keep its services non-custodial and DeFi-composable. Non-custodial means users keep control of their assets rather than handing them to an intermediary. Composable means those tokenized assets can plug into other onchain applications, such as lending markets or vaults.

What this means for tokenization

Plume’s affiliates now cover record-keeping, brokerage and offshore vault operations under one umbrella, with an ATS in the works.

No specific token launches or measurable price moves have been tied to the license so far, so any market impact remains prospective rather than demonstrated.

Until the ATS registration lands, KDS can broker tokenized securities but does not operate its own sanctioned onchain marketplace for matching trades.

The next signals to track are straightforward. Watch 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.