Bullish, Alpaca, Apex Join to Build Standards for Tokenized Stocks

Bullish, Alpaca and Apex Fintech have formed a new industry group, the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, to build standards for tokenized stocks that stay tied to the issuing company. The coalition was unveiled on Thursday, September 24.

If you have been watching the synthetic stock token debate on X over the past week, this is the next move in that story. Five firms, including Bullish (BLSH), Equiniti, Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth, want to draw a clear line between tokens that mirror real shares and tokens that just track the price.

What "issuer-sponsored" actually means

The coalition's main pitch is issuer-sponsored tokenization. A tokenized share would be linked directly to a company's official shareholder register.

That structure is built to preserve the rights that come with being a real shareholder: voting, dividends, and participation in corporate actions. The contrast that matters is with products already in the market that give you price exposure to a stock without giving you ownership of the underlying shares.

The Robinhood and AMC Entertainment dustup last week put that distinction in front of retail traders. AMC CEO Adam Aron publicly questioned whether tokenized products that replicate a stock's price can leave investors with economic exposure but without the legal standing of a registered shareholder. Issuer-sponsored models are designed to close that gap by tying the token to the issuer's own records.

Who is in the group and what each brings

The coalition was convened by Bullish and Equiniti. Equiniti is the shareholder-services and market-infrastructure firm that Bullish is in the process of acquiring. That combination matters: Equiniti already works with corporate share registers, and Bullish brings the crypto platform to the table.

Alpaca said it will contribute work on interoperability, the plumbing that lets traditional securities move into onchain markets, through its Instant Tokenization Network. Arush Sehgal, head of digital assets at Alpaca, said tokenization opens a way to connect issuers and investors that traditional market infrastructure could not. Getting it right, he said, means preserving shareholder rights and keeping onchain markets connected to the markets underneath them.

Apex Fintech Solutions, which supplies infrastructure to broker-dealers and other financial firms, said the group could help establish standards that let tokenized markets talk to existing systems.

Bullish CEO Tom Farley framed the coalition as foundational architecture. "The architecture we establish now matters and that is why we are bringing together this group of leading firms to chart the course," Farley said.

DriveWealth is also part of the coalition, though the company has not publicly detailed what role it will play.

What changes for retail

The simplest read for you as a retail trader: this is a coalition, not a product. No tokenized share goes live tomorrow as a direct result of Thursday's announcement. The group's stated work covers technical standards, settlement, custody, and moving securities between traditional market infrastructure and blockchain networks.

What it does signal is which firms want to be on the issuer-backed side of the line, and which standards they hope issuers and exchanges will adopt when they bring tokenized shares to market. If those standards take hold, the tokens you can eventually buy through your broker could come with the same shareholder rights as a share held in street name, instead of just price exposure.

The regulatory backdrop

The timing tracks a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission exemption that allows limited onchain trading of U.S.-listed equities under certain conditions. The coalition framed its work as following that exemption, not driving it.

The formal name of the SEC exemption and the exact date it was issued were not included in the announcement, and the coalition has not released any draft technical standards, settlement model, or custody framework yet.