Legal experts warn that investors may be misled into thinking they own actual shares when, in fact, they hold digital tokens issued by intermediaries—tokens that may not come with voting rights, dividend guarantees, or access to company information.

A Symbol, Not a Share: No Direct Rights to the Company

John Murillo, Chief Business Officer at B2BROKER, explains that holders of tokenized RWAs must understand what they’re buying. Most tokens do not provide:

• Ownership of underlying shares
• Voting rights
• Access to corporate financials

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Instead, they may merely represent the potential for capital gains or profit-sharing. This distinction became clear recently when Robinhood offered “private equity tokens” for OpenAI and SpaceX—prompting clarification that these were not actual company shares.

SEC and Crypto Titans: Toward Regulatory Consensus?

Despite the risks, the SEC under Chairman Paul Atkins has signaled a willingness to embrace tokenization. “Tokenization is innovation. We at the SEC should help advance innovation,” Atkins told CNBC.

Major exchanges like Coinbase are seeking SEC approval to offer tokenized stock trading. Others, like Kraken and Bybit, already support trading for over 60 tokenized public equities.

Meanwhile, blockchain platform Centrifuge has partnered with S&P Dow Jones Indices to tokenize the S&P 500—a move indicating how deeply tokenization is being explored by traditional finance.

Yet legal experts caution that without a comprehensive regulatory framework, incidents like the OpenAI token confusion will continue, potentially undermining trust in this emerging asset class.

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