The Wall Street Journal published a full-page advertisement: Eight major risks of stock tokenization
Author: Common Sense Leadership Fund
Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher
From October 24 to 25, 2026, a full-page paid advertisement aimed at publicly traded company CEOs was published in the weekend business section B5 of The Wall Street Journal, with the straightforward title: "Your Stocks, Their Tokens, Your Trouble."
The advertisement was funded by the well-known American conservative nonprofit organization Common Sense Leadership Fund, listing eight risks that stock tokenization may bring and calling on companies to exercise their dissent rights in a timely manner.
Below is the compiled text of the advertisement, along with background information provided by the Nasdaq FAQ.
Attention Public Company CEOs: Your Stocks, Their Tokens, Your Trouble
The crypto industry is about to "tokenize" your stocks in unregulated trading venues.
Act now to protect your company and investors.
Eight Risks
1. Price Deviation
Token prices are likely to deviate from the actual prices of company stocks, exacerbating investor confusion and market volatility.
2. Lack of Transparency in Equity Ownership
Tokens may obscure the ultimate holders of the stocks, weakening the company's ability to communicate with shareholders.
3. Impaired Financing Ability
Trading volume shifting from real stocks to tokenized replicas may harm the company's ability to raise new capital.
4. Cyber Theft
Hackers may steal tokens held by investors, exposing the company to new legal and reputational risks.
5. Market Manipulation
The operations of these trading venues will be outside the cross-market surveillance and transparency framework of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
6. Anti-Money Laundering and Customer Identification Gaps
Tokens can be transferred anywhere to anyone, including to criminal organizations or into sanctioned jurisdictions.
7. Lack of Investor Protection
Core protective measures from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), including the "best execution" framework, do not apply to these venues.
8. Legal Liability
If you do not choose to opt-out, you may be held legally liable if any issues arise.
What Actions Can You Take?
In light of the above risks, the SEC has granted you the right to "opt-out."
But you must act within 30 days; this is your only opportunity.
Be alert to notifications from "tokenized securities trading venues" and respond promptly.
Background Supplement: How Does the 30-Day Dissent Period Work?
The Nasdaq FAQ accompanying the advertisement, updated on September 29, 2026, cites the SEC's "Innovation Exemption" order and explains the issues that public companies need to consider.
The document shows that the SEC issued a temporary, conditional exemption arrangement on September 17, allowing qualifying tokenized securities venues (TSVs) to trade tokenized stocks through automated market makers and liquidity pools.
The 30-day deadline emphasized in the advertisement is the dissent period for issuers under this arrangement, but its starting point and applicability need further clarification.
30 Days Starts from When the Company Receives Notification
When a TSV plans to list company stocks tokenized by an unrelated third party, it must provide written notice to the company in advance. The company has 30 calendar days from the receipt of the notice to evaluate and raise objections to the venue.
If the company raises objections within the deadline, the venue cannot list the related tokenized stocks under this exemption; if the company fails to raise objections in a timely manner, the venue may proceed with trading, provided other exemption conditions are met.
Thus, the 30 days mentioned in the advertisement is not a uniform countdown faced by all public companies. Companies that have not received relevant notifications do not need to submit opt-out requests immediately.
Opting Out Needs to Be Handled Platform by Platform
A company's objection to a specific TSV is only effective for that venue and cannot simultaneously block all platforms from trading its tokenized stocks.
This means that if multiple venues issue notifications, the company needs to evaluate and respond separately. The FAQ also clearly states that Nasdaq cannot submit or process objections on behalf of public companies.
"Innovation Exemption" Still Has Applicable Conditions
The advertisement uses the term "unregulated," but the accompanying documents describe a conditional regulatory exemption.
Applicable tokenized stocks must grant holders shareholder rights equivalent to those of traditional stocks, including voting, dividends, and liquidation rights. Synthetic products that only provide exposure to price fluctuations without granting ownership of the underlying stocks do not fall under this exemption.
Additionally, TSVs are subject to conditions such as limits on the number of trading varieties, transaction volume caps, and information disclosure, and the smart contracts they use must be public, auditable, and deployed on a public permissionless distributed ledger.
What Is Nasdaq Concerned About?
Nasdaq stated in the FAQ that it supports the development of tokenization of real-world assets but believes that issuers should continue to participate in determining how their stocks are presented and traded while retaining existing shareholder rights and necessary regulatory protections.
Its concerns mainly focus on market structure. Traditional stock markets help investors compare prices across different venues through real-time buy and sell quotes and transaction reports. According to the document, TSVs are not required to adopt the same real-time centralized quoting mechanism, and transaction data disclosure allows for delays of up to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, the exemption does not mandate interoperability between different TSVs or between TSVs and traditional securities markets. A particular tokenized stock may primarily trade on one platform or even circulate only within that platform. This could lead to fragmented liquidity and increase the risk of price deviations between different venues.
Nasdaq believes that the impact of these changes on liquidity, price discovery, and long-term shareholder value may only become apparent after the experiment has been underway for some time.