Bankless

Securitize Just Went Public — Are We Still Tokenizing the World?

47 min

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo discusses the company's recent SPAC merger and NYSE listing, emphasizing that tokenization is still in its earliest stages with only about $35 billion in on-chain assets versus trillions of dollars in potential. He explains Securitize's three business lines (transfer agent, broker-dealer, and fund administration), the key bottleneck of demand-side adoption, and why compliant tokenized assets will ultimately outperform synthetic derivatives by providing genuine ownership, regulatory compliance, and better liquidity.

Summarized by Podsumo

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✨ Key Takeaways

1

Securitize completed a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, raising $400 million at a $1.25 billion pre-money valuation and listing on NYSE under ticker SECZ.
2

Carlos Domingo identifies the biggest bottleneck as demand-side adoption—while many want to tokenize, most consumers are still crypto-native, and the real breakout will come when traditional investors can use tokenized assets without knowing they're on-chain.
3

The company tokenized its own equity on Avalanche and Solana, creating the largest native tokenized asset (~$250 million), with trading compliant with US 'best price' regulations via Jump's prop AMM technology.
4

Domingo criticizes synthetic tokenized stocks (like those from Ondo or Robinhood) as derivatives that fragment liquidity, add counterparty risk, and lack regulatory protections—predicting compliant models will eventually push them out.
5

He projects the tokenized asset market could reach $1 trillion in three years (from $35 billion today), with funds (e.g., BlackRock's treasury fund) already ahead of equities in adoption.

💬 Notable Quotes

"We are at the very earliest stages of tokenizing... if you think about the amount of assets that could be tokenized in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, we're still very far away from tokenizing the world."
"Tokenization was meant to reduce intermediaries, not to increase the number of intermediaries, which is exactly what's happening with synthetic derivatives."
"The bottleneck is in the consumption side... I think the big step change happens when tokenized assets can be consumed by traditional investors that don't have to actually know that something is on chain."