Securitize Goes Public, Goes Onchain, and Goes to Wall Street's Head Simultaneously

Securitize, a tokenization platform backed by BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, completed its merger with Cantor Equity Partners II and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, July 2, under the ticker symbol SECZ. Shareholders of Cantor Equity Partners II approved the SPAC business combination at a special meeting on June 29, and the deal formally closed on June 30. Securitize Corp. became the first publicly traded tokenization infrastructure provider on a major U.S. exchange, raising approximately $400 million at a $1.25 billion pre-money valuation.

On the same day as its Wall Street debut, Securitize launched tokenized versions of its common stock, calling the move the first instance of a newly public company bringing its own stock onchain at the start of its life as a public company. The tokenized SECZ is initially available on Solana and Avalanche, and onchain data from RWA.xyz tracked roughly $295 million in tokenized SECZ shares at launch, with Securitize pegging the figure at $266 million of issuer-sponsored tokenization tied to the same common stock trading on the NYSE. The tokenized shares are accessible to eligible U.S. investors through Securitize's regulated platform, subject to onboarding, eligibility, and customer ID and money-laundering checks.

Securitize co-founder and CEO Carlos Domingo framed the dual listing in onchain terms: "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." He added that "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," and described the move as "a blueprint for public companies that want to use tokenization to create more efficient, transparent, and useful ownership experiences for their shareholders."

SECZ hit an intraday high of $13.70 in trading Thursday before retracting to a $12.30 close, a gain of 4.4%, then climbing 2.4% after-hours to $12.60; one earlier print placed shares at $12.75 for an 8% gain on debut. Cantor Equity Partners II (CEPT) had jumped more than 19% intraday ahead of the merger vote. Securitize's institutional client roster spans BlackRock, whose BUIDL tokenized money market fund administered on the platform has grown to over $3 billion in total value locked, alongside Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane, and VanEck, with the firm reporting more than $4 billion in assets under management as of June. Securitize President Brett Redfearn, a former SEC director of trading and markets who joined in April, told Decrypt that tokenization functions like a "trojan horse for consumers," pointing to decentralized lending use cases enabled by disintermediation.

The broader market for tokenized real-world assets exceeds $43 billion, with tokenized commodities accounting for nearly $7 billion and tokenized stocks at $1.6 billion, according to Token Terminal. Separately on Solana, validators holding at least 100,000 staked SOL gained a formal, stake-weighted voting process through the activation of Solana Governance Proposals on July 1, allowing the network's stakers to register directional feedback separately from technical upgrades.