The ad was placed by the Common Sense Leadership Fund, a nonprofit registered in Arlington, Virginia. The ultimate sources of funding for the campaign remain unknown.

Addressed to public-company CEOs, the ad claims the crypto industry intends to tokenize their shares on unregulated trading venues. It urges executives to take action to protect their companies and investors.

The organization cited eight alleged risks: price divergence between tokenized assets and underlying shares; opaque ownership structures; worse capital-raising conditions if trading volume moves to third-party venues; theft of tokens from investors’ wallets; market manipulation outside traditional oversight; gaps in anti-money laundering and customer-identification controls; insufficient investor protections; and potential legal claims against company executives arising from third-party platforms’ actions.

The ad also urges companies to exercise a right to opt out of third-party listings within 30 days. The period begins when an issuer receives written notice that a third party intends to tokenize its shares, not when the ad was published.

The opt-out provision relates to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s temporary Innovation Exemption regulatory regime. The framework allows eligible venues to trade tokenized securities, including through automated market makers.

A QR code in the ad links to a Nasdaq document explaining why the exchange is opting out of such trading mechanisms, including concerns about pricing transparency and trade reporting. Nasdaq representatives told CoinDesk that the company had no connection to the campaign, did not fund the Common Sense Leadership Fund and did not authorize the ad’s link to its document.

Thirty-three companies object to OKXICE listings

Major U.S. corporations have formally objected to having their shares offered on OKXICE, a joint project of crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange.

JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola, Dell Technologies, AMD, Applied Materials, Adobe and Sandisk later joined the companies opposing inclusion. Earlier objectors included Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s, Intel, Oracle and Verizon.

The total number of objections reached 33. Thirty came from the original list of 62 issuers whose shares OKXICE planned to offer, meaning about 48% of the initial group declined to participate.

A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson said the bank remained interested in tokenization despite rejecting this project. The company intends to take a careful approach to how its shares are represented and traded while continuing to assess new opportunities as the market develops, CoinDesk reported.

OKXICE plans to offer round-the-clock trading in tokenized shares, with settlement in stablecoins. It intends to use Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on the XLayer blockchain.

Securitize responds with its own ad

Securitize ran a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on October 28, highlighting what it described as the ability to issue tokenized shares in compliance with U.S. law.

The company said its model backs tokens with real shares on a one-to-one basis, preserves voting rights and dividend payments, involves verified investors and uses trading venues that meet SEC requirements.

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo called the initial campaign propaganda and said the company intended to counter it with facts.

Source: Incrypted