Fairmint CEO: Tokenizing stocks may recreate the 1960s Wall Street “paper crisis”

Comparing news, according to CoinDesk, Joris Delanoue, CEO of on-chain securities infrastructure provider Fairmint, said that the boom in tokenized stocks may recreate a digital version of Wall Street's “paper crisis” in the late 1960s. At that time, US stock trading volume surged, and the back-office that relied on paper stock certificates was overwhelmed, and settlement failures increased. The New York Stock Exchange closed for a while on Wednesday to clean up the backlog, which eventually promoted infrastructure reforms such as central depository and depository trust companies.

Delanoue said the main question was whether the crisis was being recreated digitally. Exchanges, special purpose vehicles (SPVs), token wrappers, and proprietary ledgers may split ownership records as tokenized stocks grow. Some products only provide economic exposure to underlying stocks rather than legal ownership. Investors may rely on intermediaries and face uncertainty about voting rights, dividends, and asset claims when the issuer or SPV goes wrong. The global tokenized stock market has grown from less than $500 million at the end of the first quarter to around $2 billion.