Robert Leshner estimated on the Legends4Legends stage last week, that there are 29 versions of Apple stock tokens on public blockchains. Every project issuing tokenized stocks has made its own. Some can be redeemed for cash, some cannot be redeemed at all, most are issued offshore so that US securities law does not reach them, and none puts you on Apple’s own share register. That is the first model of tokenization, and it reached scale quickly because anyone can buy the S&P 500 and wrap it.
This week the plumbing for the second model started to arrive. OKX and ICE (owner of the NYSE) published plans for a venue trading 63 tokenized US stocks around the clock under the SEC’s new innovation exemption, OKX filed separately with the SEC, and DTCC said its tokenization service for eligible securities launches this month. The exemption, which Leshner, co-founder of Superstate, described as the SEC closing the gap between the offshore products and US law, is what lets a tokenized share be the share: recorded on the issuer’s own books, with a known owner and a direct line to dividends and corporate actions. It is slower to build, but it is the version an institution can actually hold.
It is not really about 24/7 trading. Tyler Spalding of the Acronym Foundation argued that the useful property of an asset on a shared ledger is that anyone can verify it exists, where it is, and that it has not been pledged twice, which is the definition of good collateral. His protocol, Anvil, issues letters of credit against locked assets, and Bullish became the first public company to integrate it, for receivables and media buying. Leshner’s point was that tokenized funds and equities can be posted into a system like that today. What is missing is issuers, demand and the integrations between them, each feeding the other. His phrase for it was that the heat has been turned on and the water has not boiled yet.
This week’s market
- BGCI Index -4.92%
- Bitcoin -2.35%
- Ethereum -6.96%
- Solana -7.65%
All figures are week-to-date as of today 16:00 CET
Theta Blockchain Ventures content
- On 1 October, Legends4Legends brought together investors, founders and policymakers at EYE Amsterdam to discuss blockchain’s transition from speculation to institutional adoption. (watch all talks and panel discussions)
Blockchain news
- Samsung integrates USDC to overhaul cross-border remittances for 82 million Galaxy users (learn more)
- OKX and Intercontinental Exchange notify the SEC of plans for 24/7 trading in 63 tokenized US stocks (learn more)
- CFTC staff let exchanges convert stock-index futures into perpetual contracts (learn more)
- US Treasury withdraws proposed rules on unhosted crypto wallets and mixers (learn more)
- Bloomberg Terminal adds 24/7 Hyperliquid perpetuals pricing (learn more)
- Moody’s gives Sky Protocol a B3 rating, its first rating of a stablecoin protocol (learn more)
- Circle and SAP-backed Tereina bring USDC and EURC payments into SAP enterprise workflows (learn more)
- Wells Fargo in talks with Kraken parent Payward for crypto trading liquidity (learn more)
Relevant financial updates
- OKX, a crypto exchange, has raised an undisclosed amount in an extension of its funding round from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered and Qube Research & Technologies at a $25bln valuation
- Nous Research*, an open-source AI lab, has raised $90mln in a Series B round led by Robot Ventures with investments from Nvidia, USV and Menlo Ventures at a $1.5bln valuation
- Spiko, a regulated tokenized money-market funds platform, has raised $90mln in a Series B round led by NEA with investments from multiple others at an $800mln valuation
- Mecka AI*, a startup that collects and analyzes human motion data to train humanoid robots and other kinds of robots, has raised $60mln in a Series B round led by Sequoia with investments from Nvidia and others
- Ultra*, a company building fast to install, easy to use, affordable robots that automate entire workflows, has raised $50mln in a Series A round led by Framework
- Meanwhile*, a Bitcoin-denominated life insurance platform, has raised $37.5mln in a round led by Bain Capital Crypto with investments from multiple others at a $300mln valuation
- Catalyst, an AI trading agents platform that connects to brokerages and crypto exchanges, has raised $30mln in a Seed round led by Sequoia with investments from 4 others
- Navra, a platform offering easy access to curated onchain lending, borrowing and trading venues, has raised $19mln in a Series A round led by Ribbit Capital with investments from 3 others
- Noah*, a stablecoin payment rails platform, has raised $16mln in a Seed extension with investments from Endeit, FJ Labs, LocalGlobe and Felix Capital
- Vest Labs*, a perp exchange and prop trading platform, has raised $13mln in a Seed round led by Portal Ventures
- Anvil*, an Ethereum collateral protocol, has raised $5mln in a token sale led by Founders Fund with investments from Pantera, Bullish and others
- Routable, a B2B payouts platform, was acquired by Anchorage Digital for an undisclosed amount
*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 09/10
Interesting things to read and listen to
- Finance’s next opportunity is markets that don’t exist yet, from a16z crypto (read here)
- Nubank’s founder on US banking, stablecoins, and building an AI-powered bank, on the Tokenized Podcast (listen here)