The campaign shows the benefits of tokenizing shares, including expanding traditional stocks to a new pool of investors, increased trading hours, additional liquidity, and a more direct engagement with shareholders.
“We fight propaganda with facts so we also took a one-page ad on the WSJ explaining to issuers why they should embrace tokenization, and encouraging them to reach out to discuss the advantages of #TokenizationDoneRight,” wrote Securitize CEO and co-founder Carlos Domingo on X.
Securitize’s advertisement comes to counter a rival campaign that published an anti-tokenization ad in the same newspaper on Saturday, Oct 24. That ad called on CEOs of public companies to object to the tokenization of their shares on tokenized securities venues (TSVs), exchanges that follow the SEC’s innovation exemption to allow the decentralized trading of these products.
Funded by the Common Sense Leadership Fund, a 501(c)(4) non-profit civic organization founded in 2021, the ad stressed that CEO’s might be held liable if anything went wrong in these tokenization initiatives.
Domingo himself called this notion misleading, saying that the ad brought forward concerns that did not apply to “proper tokenization done in the U.S. under SEC regulations and traded on regulated venues.”
Even so, many companies have objected to having their shares listed by OKXICE, a joint venture between cryptocurrency exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) that will become one of these TSVs. So far, 38 of the 63 targeted companies have opted out, including major players like Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, McDonald’s, Walmart, and pharma giant Eli Lilly.