A slightly bizarre whodunnit has emerged in the tokenization sector. Over the weekend a full-page advertisement was published in the Wall Street Journal, slamming the SEC’s innovation exemption for tokenized securities venues (TSVs). The advertisement claims that “Crypto will soon ‘tokenize’ your shares on unregulated venues”, and warns stock issuers that they could be liable if something goes wrong.
The highest-profile planned TSV is the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and NYSE owner, ICE. As of yesterday, OKXICE faced objections on 39 of the 63 tokens it intended to list, including Alphabet, IBM, JP Morgan, Goldman and Wells Fargo.
Which comes back to a key thrust of the advert. It targets issuers, either discouraging tokenization altogether, or failing that, encouraging only issuer-sponsored tokens (ISTs). Nasdaq, which the advert’s QR code linked to, is promoting ISTs. It has denied involvement. Now one could start pointing fingers at transfer agents, but most of them also have tokenization deals. For example, Computershare has a relationship with Securitize, which published a rebuttal WSJ ad. Bullish is acquiring Equiniti and most of the other major players have plans.
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