Bullish And Equiniti Form Coalition For Issuer-Backed Tokenized Stocks

• Bullish and Equiniti have created the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to develop standards for tokenized public securities.
• Early participants include Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth.
• The group wants tokenized stocks to preserve the direct relationship between public companies and their shareholders rather than creating disconnected synthetic representations.

**ID:** B25-10

**Site:** Bitcoinist

**Status:** READY

**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team

**Focus Keyword:** Tokenization

**Image Keyword:** Stocks

**Category:** Technology

**Tags:** Bullish, Equiniti, Tokenized Stocks, Securities, Markets

**Primary Source:** https://www.businesswire.com/

Tokenized Stocks Do Not All Work The Same Way

Putting a stock price onchain is relatively easy.

Preserving shareholder rights is much harder.

Some tokenized-equity products are structured as representations backed by securities held elsewhere.

Others provide synthetic economic exposure without making the token holder the registered shareholder of the underlying company.

The new coalition wants to develop a model where issuers participate directly in how their securities are tokenized.

Bullish and Equiniti say that approach should preserve the fundamental relationship between an issuer and its shareholders while still allowing blockchain-based trading and settlement.

Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth are among the first market-infrastructure companies joining the effort.

Standards Could Become More Important Than Individual Platforms

Tokenized stocks are expanding quickly across crypto exchanges and blockchain networks.

That growth has also created fragmentation.

Different providers use different custody structures, shareholder-record systems, settlement models and restrictions.

For investors, two tokens carrying the same stock ticker may therefore provide very different legal rights.

Issuer-sponsored standards could make that easier to understand.

A company could know how its shares are represented, while investors could have clearer rules around ownership, corporate actions and shareholder communication.

The coalition is not launching a single trading venue or token today.

It is establishing a working group around the infrastructure and operating standards needed for tokenized securities to coexist with conventional capital markets.

That may sound less exciting than another exchange listing.

It is arguably more important.

If tokenized equities are going to move beyond offshore crypto products and become part of mainstream securities markets, issuers, brokers, transfer agents and exchanges will eventually need to agree on what a tokenized share actually represents.

This coalition is an attempt to start defining that answer before the market grows around incompatible versions of it.

*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*