Bullish Takes Aim at Wall Street’s Tokenized Stock Ownership Gap

Wall Street Wants the Real Thing Onchain

Investors can already buy tokens carrying the names and price movements of U.S. stocks. There’s a caveat, owning one doesn’t necessarily make you a shareholder. Bullish, Equiniti, Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and Drivewealth formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition on Sept. 24 to change that.

Instead of another crypto wrapper tracking a stock’s price, the group wants tokens tied to a company’s official shareholder register, meaning the onchain record would represent actual ownership rights rather than simply mirror what a share is worth.

Drivewealth CEO Naureen Hassan put the distinction plainly: “Much of what’s marketed today as ‘tokenized equity’ isn’t equity at all. Investors think they own the share, and they don’t.” That difference gets right to the heart of Wall Street’s tokenization experiment. Putting a stock price onchain is one thing. Putting the stock itself there, complete with the legal machinery attached to ownership, is another.

From the Shareholder Book to the Blockchain

Traditional tokenized-stock models often start with a broker holding real shares in custody and minting tokens against them 1:1. The token can provide economic exposure to the stock and, depending on the setup, pass along dividends. But the token holder isn’t necessarily listed on the company’s official shareholder register. That can leave voting rights, proxies and corporate actions sitting in a gray area.

Issuer-sponsored tokenization takes a different route. The public company and its transfer agent are directly involved, tying the token to the official ownership record so voting, dividends, stock splits and other shareholder rights can travel with it. The timing isn’t happenstance.

On Sept. 17, the SEC opened a five-year Innovation Exemption allowing certain Tokenized Securities Venues to operate permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools for tokenized National Market System stocks. There’s a big condition. Basically, qualifying tokens must provide the same rights and privileges as traditional shares. Tokens that merely track a stock’s price don’t qualify.

Wall Street’s Plumbing Meets the Blockchain

The coalition brings together much of the machinery needed to make that distinction work in practice. Equiniti, which the crypto exchange firm Bullish agreed to acquire in May, serves nearly 3,000 issuer clients and more than 20 million shareholders. Transfer agents maintain the official shareholder books, making Equiniti an important bridge between an issuer’s records and whatever eventually lives onchain.

Alpaca already sits on the other side of the equation. Reporting through mid-2026 put the broker at roughly 94% of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, backed by more than $1.5 billion in underlying shares held in custody. Apex provides clearing and broker-dealer infrastructure, while Drivewealth supplies U.S. stock access to investing platforms around the world.

The group plans to tackle technical standards, settlement, custody and interoperability between traditional market infrastructure and blockchains. Members will also meet public-company issuers at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 27. No new tokenized stock launched with the coalition.

That’s the curious part. Before Wall Street can put real shares onchain, it first has to make sure a token saying you own one actually means you do.