In plain English: A group of exchanges, brokers and market firms working on rules and plumbing so companies can put their own shares onchain, with holders keeping the same rights as normal shareholders.
Bullish and Equiniti formed the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition on 24 Sep 2026, a week after the SEC’s Innovation Exemption (Bullish). It backs the issuer-sponsored token model, where the token is tied to the company’s official shareholder register kept by its transfer agent (Bullish).
Members
- Founding (24 Sep 2026): Bullish and Equiniti, with Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth (Bullish).
- Joined 26 Oct 2026: Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), Vertalo and zerohash (Bullish).
Membership is open, non-exclusive and non-binding: joining does not commit a firm to issue, list, provide liquidity or support any product (Bullish).
Founding members Alpaca, Apex (as Apex Clearing Corporation) and DriveWealth are also among the 20 DTC participants signed for the DTCC Tokenization Service at its 28 Oct 2026 launch (DTCC; DTCC).
Focus areas
- Keep issuer and shareholder rights, including corporate-action entitlements.
- Interoperability across traditional clearing and settlement, blockchains, wrapped-token models and emerging entitlement-token frameworks. Example: Securitize’s convertible entitlement token, which converts to a registered share once the issuer sponsors tokenization (Securitize).
- Infrastructure for issuance, transfer, settlement, custody and trading.
- An open ecosystem of issuers, brokers, exchanges, transfer agents, custodians and market makers.
(Bullish)
Getting shares onto the register
Issuer-sponsored tokens need shares moved out of DTC’s nominee Cede & Co. and into the holder’s own name, via the Direct Registration System (DRS). DTC has proposed cutting DRS processing “from days to minutes”, expected 13 Nov 2026 and no later than January 2027 (SEC notice). Securitize’s comment letter asks DTC to link DRS to its own tokenization service and publish processing times (Securitize; Securitize letter).
What’s next
Members were due to meet issuers at the New York Stock Exchange on 27 Oct 2026 (Bullish). More members and initiatives were promised “in the coming weeks” (Bullish).
Why Bullish is backing this: see Bullish: Why it matters.
Related: Bullish · Legal structures · Corporate actions & dividends
Reference information only, not investment advice.
Sources
Public originals for the facts on this page.
- https://www.dtcc.com/press-releases/2026/dtcc-tokenization-service-goes-live
- https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/05/2026-20301/self-regulatory-organizations-the-depository-trust-company-notice-of-filing-of-proposed-rule-change
- https://www.sec.gov/comments/SR-DTC-2026-012/srdtc2026012-1108719-3924407.pdf
- https://www.bullish.com/us/news-insights/leading-market-infrastructure-firms-form-coalition-to-advance-issuer-sponsored-tokenized-securities
- https://www.bullish.com/us/news-insights/issuer-sponsored-token-coalition-gains-momentum-as-qrt-vertalo-and-zerohash-join