A full-page Wall Street Journal advertisement published Oct. 24 by the Common Sense Leadership Fund, a 501(c)(4) non-profit based in Arlington, Virginia, drew sharp pushback from tokenization executives who argued the ad conflated legitimate regulated practices with offshore speculation.
The ad warned public company CEOs against tokenizing their shares, citing price disparities across venues, obscured ownership, impaired capital raising, cybersecurity risks, AML/KYC loopholes and potential CEO liability. The Common Sense Leadership Fund, founded in 2021, states its mission as promoting individual freedom, lower taxes and less regulation.
Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, a publicly traded tokenization platform, called the portrayal "misleading." Domingo said the concerns do not apply to "proper tokenization done in the U.S. under SEC regulations and traded on regulated venues." He characterized the ad's risks as applying to offshore synthetics—derivatives designed to mimic stock performance without granting direct ownership—not regulated tokenization. "This is a tailwind for companies like ours doing it the right way," Domingo said, describing tokenization as a "durable long-term business model."
Gabriel Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of MetaleX, raised a separate concern: concentration of tokenized share ownership among large intermediaries like Robinhood and Coinbase could give these platforms outsized voting influence in contested shareholder scenarios. "Public companies will care about this more than crypto people expect," Shapiro said.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, however, views tokenization as a significant opportunity to open new revenue streams in financial markets.
