Wall Street Coalition Seeks to Bring Actual Ownership Rights to Tokenized Stocks

Wall Street's tokenization experiment is taking a significant step forward as five major players in the industry, including Bullish and Equiniti, have come together to form the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition. The coalition aims to create tokens that are directly tied to a company's official shareholder register, giving investors actual ownership rights rather than just mirroring the stock's price.

This is a departure from traditional tokenized-stock models, which often start with a broker holding real shares in custody and minting tokens against them 1:1. However, these tokens do not necessarily grant voting rights or other shareholder privileges to the holder.

The coalition plans to tackle technical standards, settlement, custody, and interoperability between traditional market infrastructure and blockchains. The group also aims to address the gray area surrounding token holders' voting rights, dividends, stock splits, and other shareholder rights.