Securitize Raises $14M From Santander, MUFG, Nomura

Security token issuance platform provider, Securitize, announced yesterday that it had banked $14 million from a group of investors, including Banco Santander, MUFG, and Nomura.

Securitize Raises $30M in Total

The blockchain-oriented firm extended its Series A round by securing investments from Banco Santander’s venture capital arm – Santander InnoVentures, Mitsubishi UFJ’s (MUFG) venture capital subsidiary MUFG Innovation Partners, and Japan’s Nomura Holdings. Existing Series A investors like SPiCE VC, Blockchain Capital, and SeedRocket4Founders also took part in the latest financing round.

Thus, Securitize has secured a total of $30 million for its token issuance platform. The company hopes to transform the way financial securities move in capital markets.

Securitize’s Digital Securities (DS) Protocol enables the trading of security tokens on secondary markets in line with the regulatory requirements. The company says that its protocol has the highest adoption rate, managing to issue 11 digital securities so far.

Securitize CEO and co-founder Carlos Domingo commented:

Bringing on key strategic investors like Santander InnoVentures, MUFG, and Nomura, as well as leading blockchain investors, validates how transformative digital securities are for traditional financial markets.

Nobutake Suzuki, CEO of MUFG’s ventures capital arm, said that digital securities had become a primary use case for blockchain.

The latest investment round proved that Asian firms are increasingly interested in digital securities. Besides Nomura and MUFG, Securitize raised funds from KDDI Open Innovation fund, a subsidiary of KDDI – one of the leading telecom firms in Japan, 31 Ventures, the innovation arm of Japan’s real estate giant Mitsui Fudosan, Hong Kong-based blockchain VC firm Kenetic Capital, and Fenbushi Capital, which is the first blockchain-oriented  venture capital firm in Asia.

Security Tokens to Transform Trading

Security tokens have the potential to revolutionize trading. By tokenizing real-world assets like company stocks, real estate, bonds, and other equity instruments, investors get access to faster trade execution, increased transparency, and fractional ownership.

Security tokens are poised to become the next big trend among blockchain instruments, after stablecoins secured this label last year. Notably, regulators like the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) don’t oppose these tokens.

Jehan Chu, co-founder of Kenetic Capital, commented:

Digital securities represent trillions of dollars of value frozen in an antiquated system. Securitize holds the key to unlock this value and launch a new era of global digital trade.

Last year, Securitize raised $12.75 million from leading blockchain-oriented investors including Coinbase Ventures, Ripple Ventures, Blockchain Capital, and Global Brains.

When do you expect company giants like Apple and Facebook to tokenize at least part of their shares? Share your thoughts in the comments section! 

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