The US government is still closed as the Senate again fails to advance a funding bill. I bet Felix will share some macro thoughts on this saga tomorrow.

For now though, let’s address what a tokenization platform is focusing on after its latest capital raise — and how developments in that segment could impact an asset like SOL.

Securitize, stablecoins and SOL

We touched on tokenization yesterday, with Dinari set to tokenize S&P’s upcoming index that blends crypto assets and stocks. 

But I also wanted to call out Ark Invest’s recent strategic investment in Securitize, which seeks to play a big role in bringing capital markets onchain.

The Securitize name might ring a bell. It’s the company that last year helped BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — launch its first tokenized fund (BUIDL, which holds cash, US Treasury bills and repos).

Securitize’s focus is simple, at least on paper: get more institutions to tokenize their assets, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo told me.  

“In practice, that means continuing to simplify access to tokenized funds and equities, deepening liquidity through DeFi integrations and broadening participation across the global investor base,” he said.

Looking ahead, Domingo added the firm is particularly focused on boosting the tokenized public equities universe. This trend is sure to come up at DAS London next week. 

Securitize has a history with tokenizing stocks. It helped Exodus offer a digital representation of its Class A common stock to holders of those in 2021 (before tokenization was cool, you might say). The company more recently allowed shareholders to elect to tokenize FG Nexus’s common stock on Ethereum.

“Our native tokenization model is uniquely positioned to lead that evolution because these are digitally native securities that directly represent legal ownership of the underlying shares — all recorded and transferable onchain under full regulatory compliance,” Domingo said. 

So public companies can extend the same rights and protections as traditional shares, Domingo noted. Some other offerings (i.e. Kraken/Backed’s xStocks and Robinhood stock tokens) give price exposure to the underlying asset but don’t carry rights like shareholder voting.

Bullish for ETH, SOL?

I brought up yet another tokenization development as a segue of sorts to address investor demand for Ethereum and Solana. Moreso SOL — given the launch of US spot SOL ETFs appears imminent. We’ve already seen initial investor demand for ETH ETFs, which have notched $15 billion of net inflows in their first 14-plus months trading in the US.  

“SOL and ETH both are potential winners as the stablecoin and tokenization markets become a part of the US financial markets,” ZX Squared Capital co-founder CK Zheng told me. “When the SEC Project Crypto provides more clarity on the regulatory front, I expect the prices of both coins will reach a new [all-time high].”

ETH and SOL were ~8% and ~23% off their peak prices, respectively, at 2 pm ET. 

The value of RWAs/stablecoins on Solana still lags that on Ethereum by a lot — though Solana is seeing impressive growth there, per RWA.xyz data.

Blockworks Research’s Marc Arjoon also pointed to signs of Solana’s “maturing ecosystem.”

As Bitwise’s Matt Hougan previously noted: “[Solana’s] promoters argue that Solana is the only blockchain fast enough to support the tokenization of major assets at a global scale.”

Demand for the proposed US solana ETFs expected to launch soon will tell us how many investors subscribe to that type of premise.

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