Carlos Domingo, chief executive officer of Securitize Inc., speaks during the Messari Mainnet summit in New York, US, on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Securitize, the “real world assets” platform that powers BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, will go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, CEO Carlos Domingo told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
The fintech firm will merge with Cantor Equity Partners II, Inc., a blank-check company sponsored by an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald that trades under the CEPT ticker. The deal values Securitize’s business at $1.25 billion in pre-money equity.
“Tokenization is what everybody’s talking about … but there’s nobody publicly traded that does it,” Domingo told CNBC. “We will do well in the public market because people want to index themselves to tokenization the same way that people are buying Circle because they want to index themselves to stablecoins.”
Tokenization refers to the registration of ownership rights to real-world assets such as stocks, bonds or gold on a blockchain. The process enables more transparent and around-the-clock trading versus traditional methods, according to its proponents — among whom are Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Following the merger, the combined entity Securitize Corp.’s stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SECZ. Shares could begin trading on the exchange as soon as January, according to Domingo.
The company will book $465 million in gross proceeds from the deal. That includes $225 million from private investors including Borderless Capital and Hanwha Investment, and $240 million in the SPAC’s trust account, assuming no redemptions.
RWA tokenization takes off
The deal comes as tokenized RWAs boom. The combined market value of tokenized U.S. Treasurys has climbed to roughly $8.6 billion as of writing time, up more than 200% over the past year, according to data provider RWA.xyz.
The RWA tokenization market as a whole has ballooned 135% over the past year and is now worth $35 billion, the data shows. Citi analysts see massive growth for the tokenized RWA market, saying it could grow to almost $4 trillion by 2030.
That positions Securitize — which Domingo says has been profitable in recent quarters — to jump into the fray of firms aiming to capitalize on growing demand for digital assets. Earlier this year, Circle debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, raising about $1.1 billion in its blockbuster IPO. Cryptocurrency exchanges Gemini and Bullish also went public earlier in 2025.
Tapping public markets will create winners and losers as the digital asset space continues to grow and mature, Domingo added.
“The crypto industry needs to consolidate,” he said. “If you’re publicly traded and you have access to stock capital markets as well as cash, you can be on the side that is consolidating and not be consolidated by somebody else.”
‘A better ledger’
Founded in 2017, Securitize has facilitated several large financial firms’ first forays into tokenized funds.
In March 2024, BlackRock launched its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) on the Ethereum blockchain in partnership with Securitize, enabling qualified investors to digitally hold U.S. Treasurys and earn yield. The firm has also tokenized more than $4 billion in assets through partnerships with Apollo, Hamilton Lane, KKR and VanEck on their tokenized funds.
Securitize is the largest tokenization platform, dominating 20% of the RWA tokenization market, per RWA.xyz.
The company plans to also digitize its own equity, a move designed to demonstrate how the public company process and trading can move on-chain, Domingo told CNBC. The executive sees a future in which everything is brought on-chain.
“There’s $400 trillion out there of assets that could potentially be tokenized,” Domingo said. “It’s an upgrade … within the next five to 10 years, you will see everything will be on-chain, because it’s just a better ledger.”
(Source)