Securitize Debuts on NYSE as SECZ, Tokenizes Itself on Day One Because Of Course It Does 🪙

Securitize, the tokenization infrastructure provider backed by BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, closed its merger with Cantor Equity Partners II and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on July 2 under the ticker symbol SECZ, raising approximately $400 million at a $1.25 billion pre-money valuation. Cantor Equity Partners II shareholders approved the business combination on June 29, with the merger formally closing on June 30. The combined entity operates as Securitize Corp., with the company becoming the first pure-play tokenization infrastructure firm to list on a major U.S. exchange. CEPT shares jumped more than 19% ahead of the merger vote, and SECZ opened higher on its debut, recently trading at $12.75, up more than 8%, before settling at $12.30 for a gain of about 4.4% and climbing 2.4% after-hours to $12.60, after touching an intraday high of $13.70.

On its first trading day, Securitize simultaneously launched tokenized versions of its common stock on the Avalanche and Solana layer-1 networks, with the company reporting roughly $266 million to $295 million in tokenized SECZ issued at launch, a mark it called the largest tokenized stock in the world. "We have long said that public equities are moving on-chain, and there is no stronger validation of that belief than tokenizing our own public stock on Day 1," said Securitize co-founder and CEO Carlos Domingo. "SECZ is not a synthetic token or offshore wrapper. It is issuer-sponsored tokenization of the same common stock trading on the NYSE, made available through regulated infrastructure," he added. Access to the tokenized shares is limited to eligible U.S. investors who pass onboarding, identity, and anti-money-laundering checks through Securitize's regulated platform. Securitize President Brett Redfearn, the SEC's former director of trading and markets who joined Securitize in April, said tokenization can directly benefit everyday investors by enabling them to maintain control over their assets and cut out intermediaries. "I think that business is totally disruptible," Redfearn said. "There's a lot of opportunities when you start to disintermediate traditional businesses."

Founded in 2017, Securitize holds SEC-registered broker-dealer, transfer agent, fund administrator, and ATS operator licenses in the U.S., along with authorization under the EU DLT Pilot Regime. Its institutional clients include BlackRock, whose BUIDL tokenized money market fund administered on Securitize's platform has grown to more than $3 billion in total value locked, as well as Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane, and VanEck. As of June, the firm reported more than $4 billion in assets under management. Benchmark Equity Research reiterated a "Buy" rating on the stock with a $16 price target earlier in June. The broader tokenized real-world asset market exceeds $43 billion, according to Token Terminal data cited in coverage, with tokenized money market funds making up the majority, tokenized commodities at nearly $7 billion, and tokenized stocks at $1.6 billion. Securitize separately partnered with the NYSE in March to create tokenized assets for the exchange's planned tokenized securities platform.

The debut coincided with the Solana Foundation activating Solana Governance Proposals on July 1, introducing a stake-weighted voting framework for validators holding at least 100,000 staked SOL, with individual delegators able to override their validator's vote. SOL was up 19.3% over the prior seven days, while Bitcoin topped $62,000 on Thursday, recently trading near $61,808 after falling to a 21-month low under $58,000 earlier in the week, with Ethereum, XRP, and other major cryptocurrencies also posting gains amid a wave of short-side liquidations.