coindesk.com
As some of America's biggest companies resist having their shares traded on new blockchain-based venues, former New York Stock Exchange President Stacey Cunningham sees a problem with the industry's approach: Stock issuers are too often left out of the conversation.
Cunningham, who joined CoinDesk's parent company and digital asset platform Bullish BLSH$22.32 as president this week, wants to change that by giving companies a more direct role in how their shares are tokenized and traded.
"There's a lot of synthetic tokenization happening. Issuers are not part of those conversations," she told CoinDeStacey Cunningham, who recently joined digital asset platform Bullish as President, sees the company’s planned Equiniti acquisition and focus on stock issuers as key to its tokenization ambitions.sk in an interview.
However, while tokenization is becoming the talk of Wall Street, there is some initial pushback from companies. By Nov. 6, 56 of the 62 companies initially selected for a planned tokenized-stock venue backed by crypto exchange OKX and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange had objected, according to a CoinDesk tally.
The objections, which include companies such as Apple, Amazon and Tesla, do not necessarily signal opposition to tokenization itself. But they show how difficult it can be to build a market for tokenized stocks without cooperation from the companies whose shares are being traded.
Cunningham, who led the NYSE from 2018 to 2022, believes tokenization will become part of mainstream financial markets, and as the next step for traditional financial markets, even if questions remain about how quickly it happens and which business models prevail.
"It's no longer a question about whether or not things are going to get tokenized. It's just a matter of how long it takes for it to happen," Cunningham said.
Bringing stock issuers into the process
Bullish is seeking to build an issuer-focused tokenization platform by combining its exchange, custody and trading operations with the shareholder-recordkeeping business it expects to acquire through its planned $4.2 billion purchase of Equiniti.
The deal, expected to close in January 2027 subject to regulatory approvals, would bring Equiniti's relationships with nearly 3,000 corporate issuers and more than 20 million shareholders into Bullish's business.
Transfer agents maintain official records of share ownership and process changes to those records. Their role could become increasingly important if companies want to issue tokenized shares that carry the same legal and economic rights as traditional stock.
