Securitize starts selling share-backed tokens of Apple, Nvidia and ten other US stocks

Securitize, an American firm that turns financial assets into blockchain tokens, said on 8 October that it had started selling tokens of 12 large US stocks. They include Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla and Palantir. Each token is backed by one real share. Buyers in the United States, the European Union and other permitted countries trade them on Solana, a public blockchain, and pay in USDC, a dollar stablecoin.

What Securitize stresses is what the buyer actually owns. It sets its tokens against products that mainly track a share's price. In law, each token is the same kind of claim an investor has on a share held through a broker. It carries the dividends and, where the share has them, the votes. Securitize says the shares behind the tokens will not be lent out. Its chief executive, Carlos Domingo, said tokenized stocks should give investors "more than a price on a wrapper that tracks a stock and is only offered offshore".

The company's own small print sets the limits. Holders are not registered shareholders of Apple or the others unless they convert their tokens into ordinary shares. They can do that only once a company itself adopts tokenized shares. None of the 12 companies has sponsored or endorsed the tokens. Trading starts in extended hours only, and Securitize says it plans to move towards trading around the clock.

Jump Trading, a large trading firm, will quote prices through an automated market on Solana that Securitize already runs. RQD, a clearing firm, is supporting the back-office work of clearing, holding and settling the shares. Securitize also expects the tokens to trade on two venues still being built. One is a round-the-clock digital market planned by the New York Stock Exchange. The other is OKXICE, a joint venture between the crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange.

Neither venue has launched, the release says, and trading there needs regulators' approval and "may not occur". OKXICE set out its plans on 4 October without naming the firm that would supply the shares behind its tokens. Securitize says only that its tokens are expected to be available there, which does not make it that supplier. It also says the tokens may later serve as collateral for loans on Aave, a crypto lending service. The reports differ on the firm itself: CoinDesk says it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in June, and Securitize's release says July.