Bullish-led coalition advances issuer-backed tokenized stocks in U.S. market push

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Tokenized stocks US market push

Highlights

Bullish, Equiniti, Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions, and DriveWealth formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to develop standards for issuer-backed tokenized securities.
The coalition focuses on linking tokenized shares directly to official shareholder registers, aiming to ensure holders retain voting, dividends, and corporate action rights.
The coalition's launch follows a recent SEC exemption permitting limited onchain trading of U.S.-listed equities, supporting integration of blockchain and traditional financial infrastructure.

Standards push follows SEC exemption

As reported by CoinDesk, Bullish, Equiniti, Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth have formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to build standards for tokenized securities that remain directly linked to the companies issuing them.

The coalition, unveiled on Thursday, is convened by Bullish and Equiniti, a shareholder-services and market-infrastructure firm that Bullish is acquiring. The companies say the group is working on technical standards, settlement, custody and methods for moving securities between traditional market infrastructure and blockchain networks.

Its core focus is issuer-sponsored tokenization, a structure in which a tokenized share is connected to a company’s official shareholder register. The model is intended to preserve investor rights including voting, dividends and participation in corporate actions.

Tom Farley, chief executive of Bullish, says the architecture established now will shape how the market develops. Alpaca adds that it plans to support interoperability between traditional securities and onchain markets through its Instant Tokenization Network.

Shareholder rights become central market issue

The coalition is emerging as the market pays closer attention to whether tokenized or synthetic stock products provide the same legal protections as direct share ownership. That distinction is becoming more important as firms expand products that offer stock exposure without always giving holders ownership of the underlying shares.

A recent dispute involving AMC Entertainment chief executive Adam Aron and Robinhood has highlighted that concern, focusing on whether some products may give investors economic exposure to a stock without the rights of registered shareholders. Issuer-sponsored models are designed to narrow that gap by tying the token directly to issuer records.

Apex Fintech Solutions says the effort could help create standards that allow tokenized markets to connect with existing financial systems. The coalition says its work follows last week’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission exemption that allows limited onchain trading of U.S.-listed equities under certain conditions.

Our earlier coverage of the Federal Reserve’s proposed stablecoin oversight rules explained how the GENIUS Act framework would be implemented through reserve, capital, and custody standards for Fed-supervised issuers and banks. We noted that the proposal also defines what stablecoin-related activities supervised banks can perform and opens a 60-day public comment period after publication in the Federal Register.

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