The race to tokenizing everything

Two-day settlement, market hours, and idle collateral queues are not laws of finance. They are artifacts of infrastructure built before the internet. Tokenization replaces pre-internet settlement infrastructure with shared, programmable, ledgers that change cost structures, eliminate friction, and enable product designs that simply do not exist today.

Larry Fink, whose firm manages $14 trillion, put the institutional view plainly at a WEF panel in January: "I think the movement towards tokenization, digitization is necessary... I think we need to move very rapidly to doing that. We would be reducing fees, we would do more democratization by reducing more fees if we had all investments on a tokenized platform that can move from a tokenized money market fund to equities and bonds and back and forth. If we have one common blockchain, we can reduce corruption... the activities are probably processed and more secure than ever before."

This week saw major announcements across every layer of the tokenization stack. Securitize received the first FINRA approval to underwrite tokenized securities and settle them against stablecoins inside a conventional broker-dealer framework. Computershare, transfer agent for 58% of S&P 500 companies, agreed to offer tokenized shares alongside traditional shares through the direct registration system. Bullish acquired Equiniti, one of the world's largest transfer agents, for $4.2 billion. The DTCC announced production trading in tokenized securities starting in July. And all of this happened in the span of a week.

Tokenization remains one of our core investment themes.

Also this week

• Kraken parent Payward to acquire Hong Kong stablecoin firm Reap for $600 million
• AWS taps Coinbase and Stripe to power USDC payments for AI agents
• DTCC sets July launch window for tokenized securities pilot with Wall Street giants onboard
• Bullish to acquire Equiniti in $4.2 billion deal combining transfer agent and tokenization stack
• Ripple, JPMorgan and others use XRP Ledger to settle tokenized Treasuries fund internationally
• Morgan Stanley pilots crypto trading on E*Trade with 50-basis-point fee

Relevant financial updates

• Bullish has acquired Equiniti, a global transfer agent and shareholder services provider, for $4.2bln
• Kraken has acquired Reap, a global financial infrastructure company powered by stablecoins, for $600mln
• MoonPay* has acquired DFlow*, a decentralized order flow marketplace, for $100mln
• Global Settlement Network, a real world assets settlement layer, has raised $11mln in a Pre Seed round led by Prevail Venture Capital Fund with investments from Outliers Fund, a16z Scout Fund, and 3 others
• OpenTrade*, a decentralized asset manager, has received a $17mln strategic investment from Notion Capital and Mercury Fund with investments from a16z crypto, CMCC Global, and AlbionVC
• Centrifuge, a real world assets platform, has received a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures
• AmericanFortress, a quantum-proof blockchain security and identity solution, has raised $8mln in a Seed round with investments from 0G Labs, Moon Pursuit Capital, and SAVA Investment Management
• OnRe Finance, a decentralized insurance and on-chain reinsurance platform, has raised $5mln in a Series A round led by RockawayX and Forward Industries
• Fun*, a decentralized payments and global financial services platform, has raised $72mln in a Series A round led by Multicoin Capital and SignalFire with investments from Infinity Ventures Crypto, Pharsalus Capital, and Justin Mateen
• a16z crypto announced a $2.2bln raise for their fifth fund

*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 08/05

Interesting things to read

• The state of tokenization Q1 2026, by our manager Pantera Capital
• Ethereum co-founder warns that big tech is racing to build centralized AI systems on the When Shift Happens podcast

Upcoming events

• AIMA Digital Assets Conference 2026, 15 May
• Legends4Legends Amsterdam, 1 October