Bullish and Equiniti Form Coalition to Set Standards for Registry-Linked Tokenized Shares

Key Facts

Bullish and Equiniti announced the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition on September 24, 2026, to advance securities tokenized with an issuer's involvement. Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth joined as initial participants. The group intends to develop standards and operating infrastructure that connect digital tokens to issuers' shareholder records. Its proposed model seeks to preserve the ownership rights attached to conventional shares, including voting and dividends. The announcement establishes an industry working group; it does not announce that the coalition has issued new shares or begun trading them.

The coalition's conveners bring different functions to the proposed market structure: Bullish provides digital-asset infrastructure, while Equiniti provides shareholder registry services. The other participants contribute capabilities across brokerage, trading, technology and the links between securities systems. Bullish describes the group as open and nonexclusive, leaving room for additional participants. Membership is nonbinding and does not require a company to issue or list a security, supply liquidity or enter a commercial arrangement. That distinction matters because a standards initiative has a different financial meaning from an operating contract with a defined product and revenue.

The shareholder register matters because it records who owns a security and how transfers and associated rights are recognized. SEC staff have explained that an issuer or its agent can integrate distributed-ledger technology into its ownership records, making a token transfer correspond to a transfer in the master shareholder file. On-chain records can also be associated with off-chain information, including the holder's identity and share quantity. A token's movement alone cannot establish the intended ownership relationship if the issuer's controlling records do not reflect it. The coalition's focus on the register therefore addresses the link between digital transfer and enforceable shareholder rights.

Differences among token structures explain the emphasis on issuer sponsorship. SEC staff distinguish a third-party token representing an indirect interest in a share held in custody from an instrument whose value merely tracks a share's price. In the latter case, an investor can gain economic exposure without receiving voting or dividend rights against the underlying company. The coalition's proposed model instead centers the relationship between the issuer, its shareholder register and the token holder. For investors comparing products, the label 'tokenized stock' alone does not establish the nature of ownership or the rights that accompany it.

The group's stated agenda has four strands: preserving issuer and shareholder rights, building interoperability, preparing operating infrastructure and broadening market participation. Its interoperability work covers movement across conventional clearing and settlement systems, blockchain networks and wrapped-token arrangements. In practical terms, those systems must agree on the ownership effect of a transfer, beyond displaying a digital representation of a share. A rapid token transfer would achieve little for the proposed model if the recognized shareholder entitlement failed to move with it. Consistent treatment of the same transfer across the relevant records is therefore a meaningful test of the standards the group develops.

The coalition also plans to address issuance, transfer, settlement, custody and secondary trading. It expects to examine blockchain and smart-contract designs, develop interoperability standards, assess regulatory requirements and pursue prototypes and pilots. Each function solves a different part of the transaction: issuance creates the security, custody governs control, settlement completes the trade, and the register identifies the rights holder. Bringing brokers, transfer agents, custodians and liquidity providers into the discussion addresses the handoffs among those functions. These remain development and testing plans, with operational results needed before the proposed infrastructure can support broad use.

The announcement followed the SEC's September 17 innovation exemption for limited, conditional trading of tokenized stocks on eligible venues. Under the framework, a venue must verify that a tokenized share gives holders the same rights and privileges as a conventional share of the equivalent class. The relief also limits the number of symbols and trading volume, and requires trading to stop when the underlying share is halted on its primary exchange. An issuer must have a chance to object before a venue trades a tokenized version created by an unaffiliated party. The exemption lasts 5 years; the coalition's formation does not itself constitute regulatory approval of any particular product.

Bullish already has a related project: on May 5, 2026, it announced that shareholders could hold BLSH shares as tokens administered by Equiniti. The same day, Bullish announced an agreement to acquire Equiniti for $4.2 billion, with closing expected in January 2027 subject to approvals and customary conditions. The companies say they are developing infrastructure that links the shareholder register with conventional securities markets and blockchain networks. That existing work offers a practical case for discussions about standards, without establishing that every coalition member has adopted the same system. Completion of the acquisition is a separate event governed by its own conditions.

For a BLSH shareholder, the coalition makes Bullish's intended direction in tokenization and market infrastructure more concrete. Other members' participation is nonbinding, however, and the announcement specifies no fee schedule, issuance volume or commitment to provide liquidity. Membership and the breadth of the work program therefore cannot be translated directly into additional company revenue. The financial test is whether standards and pilots become services that issuers and investors use under identifiable commercial terms. Investors pricing rapid growth from this activity still need to distinguish announced participation from paid adoption.

Coalition members plan to meet issuers and other market leaders at the New York Stock Exchange on October 27 to discuss the infrastructure public-company tokenization would require. The group also said it expects to announce more participants and initiatives in the following weeks. Useful developments would include defined registry and transfer standards, identified issuer participation, and the scope of any pilot or operating product. The SEC's request for comment on its exemption and Equiniti's acquisition, expected to close in January 2027, are separate factors affecting the path to scale. Specific operating and commercial arrangements would make the coalition's effect easier to assess than membership growth alone.