Stacey Cunningham Pushes Bullish Toward Tokenized Stocks
Bullish wants to build an issuer-first model through Equiniti and blockchain tests, while major U.S. companies are still cautious about tokenized stocks.
Key Takeaways
- Stacey Cunningham wants the companies behind stocks to be involved early in tokenized stocks, instead of third parties building products without their input.
- Bullish wants to build an issuer-first platform that combines exchange, custody, trading, and Equiniti's shareholder register.
- The tokenization debate is also playing out in Europe, where it is seen as a bridge between traditional investment products and blockchain.
Stacey Cunningham, former president of the New York Stock Exchange, is pushing Bullish toward a different approach to tokenized stocks. In her view, the companies behind the shares should be brought into the process much earlier, instead of third parties building products without their input. Bullish is trying to support that direction with a planned acquisition of Equiniti and with its own tests on the blockchain.
Issuers Need a Seat at the Table
Cunningham said there is still too much synthetic tokenization happening now, with issuers left out of the conversation. That is a problem, she said, especially now that major U.S. companies are cautious about trading platforms for tokenized stocks. In a recent count, 56 of the 62 companies selected for a planned tokenized-stock venue from OKX and Intercontinental Exchange had objected, including Apple, Amazon, and Tesla.
Those objections do not automatically mean companies are against tokenization. But they do show that a market for tokenized stocks is hard to build without the cooperation of the companies whose shares are being traded. Cunningham, who led the NYSE from 2018 to 2022, sees tokenization as a development that will eventually become part of mainstream financial markets.
Bullish Is Building the Foundation
Bullish wants to build an issuer-first platform by combining its exchange, custody, and trading with the shareholder register it expects to get through the planned acquisition of Equiniti. The $4.2 billion (€3.7 billion) deal is expected to close in January 2027, if regulators approve it. That would give Bullish access to relationships with nearly 3,000 corporate issuers and more than 20 million shareholders.
According to Cunningham, that is exactly what matters, because transfer agents keep the official ownership records and process changes to them. That could become important if companies want to issue tokenized stocks that have the same legal and economic rights as regular shares. Bullish is already testing that approach with its own shares. Earlier this year, the company tokenized its shares on Solana, and in October it showed the transfer of 61 million reserved tokenized Bullish shares at an event at the NYSE, which were managed by Equiniti.
Why This Matters for Europe
The tokenization debate is not just happening in the United States. Regulators and exchange companies are increasingly looking at ways to trade existing securities faster and more efficiently while keeping investors' legal rights intact. The SEC has also taken steps around pilots and rules that could make tokenized securities trading possible, showing that this topic is moving further from experiment to market infrastructure.
For European crypto and capital markets, that matters because tokenization is also increasingly seen here as a bridge between traditional investment products and blockchain. Bullish names Solana and Ethereum as networks for its tokenization services, alongside Aptos. That shows the battle over the infrastructure behind tokenized assets is far from settled.