Paxos just crossed a threshold few blockchain companies ever reach. On May 27, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted temporary registration to Paxos Securities Settlement Company, LLC as a clearing agency under Section 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The move, detailed in SEC Release No. 34-105562, positions the firm as the only blockchain-native entity cleared to act as a central securities depository for U.S. securities. Short sentence. Yet its implications stretch across post-trade operations that have changed little in decades. The approval caps seven years of engagement with regulators. CEO and co-founder Charles Cascarilla called it “the result of seven years of work with the SEC.” That work started with a 2019 no-action letter from the agency’s Division of Trading and Markets. It permitted a feasibility study of the Paxos Settlement Service, a distributed-ledger system for clearing and settling listed U.S. equity trades on a delivery-versus-payment basis.…