Bullish and Equiniti have formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, a working group announced on Thursday to set standards for tokenised securities that stay tied to the companies that issue them. Brokerage infrastructure providers Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth are the first firms to join. Equiniti is a transfer agent that keeps shareholder registers, and that is the point: the group wants onchain shares linked to the official record of who owns what.
The coalition says it will work on technical standards, settlement, custody and the movement of tokens between traditional and blockchain infrastructure. Its argument is that an issuer-sponsored token carries the same rights as the share it represents, including votes, dividends and participation in corporate actions, while the synthetic products common on crypto platforms offer price exposure and little else. Bullish chief executive Tom Farley said the architecture being set now matters, which is why the firms were coming together.
The announcement follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s innovation exemption last week, which allows limited onchain trading of US-listed equities under set conditions. That exemption opened a door without deciding what should walk through it. The coalition is an attempt by the plumbing providers to shape the answer before synthetic versions become the default by sheer volume.
Missing from the launch is any issuer. The members are the firms that would sit between companies and investors, not the companies themselves, and none of the announcements named a listed business planning to tokenise its shares. There is no timetable for the standards either. Until a board decides that onchain shareholders are worth the cost and legal work, the difference between sponsored and synthetic stays a principle rather than a product.
