Bullish and Equiniti launch Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition to set standards for tokenized securities

Two companies that just agreed to merge are already working on shaping the broader industry they want to operate in. Bullish, the institutional digital asset exchange, and Equiniti, one of the world’s largest transfer agents, have launched the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, an initiative focused on building standards, infrastructure, and legal frameworks for tokenized securities. The timing is deliberate. Bullish announced a definitive agreement to acquire Equiniti in a $4.2B transaction on May 5, 2026, and the coalition is a direct extension of the strategic logic behind that deal. What the coalition is actually trying to solve Tokenizing a security is relatively straightforward in a technical sense. The harder problem is preserving everything that comes with owning a share: voting rights, dividend entitlements, regulatory protections, and the ability to participate in corporate actions. The Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition is specifically designed to address that gap. By centering the model on the issuer rather than the exchange or the custodian, the coalition is trying to build a structure where tokenized shares carry the same legal weight as their paper-and-ledger equivalent...