Asset Tokenization in Europe Gets a Boost With Securitize’s Landmark Tokenized Equity Issuance

Asset tokenization firm Securitize has issued the first tokenized equities under the European Union’s pilot regime for digital assets, the company announced on Thursday.

The tokens issued via the smart contract network Avalanche (AVAX) represent equity in Spanish real estate investment trust Mancipi Partners, supervised under the test environment of Spain’s securities regulator (CNMV). Trading with equity tokens on secondary markets will start in September, the firm said.

The issuance comes as traditional capital markets and crypto are becoming increasingly intertwined by placing old-school investment products like private equity and debt on blockchain applications in the form of tokens. Tokenization could disrupt the current financial infrastructure and create a more efficient system, Bank of America (BAC) said. The market for tokenized assets could mushroom to $16 trillion by 2030, according to a Boston Consulting Group report.

“European businesses will be a major beneficiary of this innovation, giving businesses a new way to raise capital through primary capital raises, and obtain potential tax benefits and liquidity through secondary trading,” Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, said in a statement.

Last year, Securitize tokenized investment funds of asset managers Hamilton Lane and KKR in the U.S. The firm also expanded to Europe entering Spain’s regulatory test environment for digital assets last summer.

The company claims that this was the first such tokenized equity issuance under the EU’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) pilot regime, which was designed to create a regulated environment for trading securities such as equities and bonds using blockchain technology.

Securitize hopes to receive licenses to issue, manage and trade tokenized securities in Spain and throughout the EU once completing a roughly six-month test period.