Tokenization platform Securitize is gearing up for a big Wall Street debut. The company said Friday it expects to pull in around $400 million through its merger with Cantor Equity Partners II, a SPAC backed by Cantor Fitzgerald.
The key number: fewer than 30% of CEPT shareholders opted to redeem their shares. That’s a strong vote of confidence. It means most investors are sticking around for the ride.
Securitize will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ starting July 2, assuming shareholder approval comes through Monday. The merger wraps up July 1.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Wall Street has been hungry for exposure to tokenization — the idea of representing real-world assets on a blockchain. BlackRock and Morgan Stanley are backers. Coinbase and Circle too. Even the NYSE partnered with Securitize in March to build tokenized assets for its upcoming platform.
Carlos Domingo, Securitize’s co-founder and CEO, put it bluntly: when they started eight years ago, institutional adoption of tokenized securities was “largely theoretical.” Now it’s moving into the mainstream.
Standard Chartered thinks the tokenized asset market could hit $2.7 trillion by 2030. The SEC was reportedly close to allowing tokenized stock trading in May, though it hit pause after exchanges raised implementation concerns.
CEPT shares jumped 7% on the news and kept climbing after-hours to $11.
