Carlos Domingo, chief executive officer of Securitize Inc., speaks during the Messari Mainnet summit in New York, US, on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Securitize, the "real world assets" platform that powers BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, will go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, CEO Carlos Domingo told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
The fintech firm will merge with Cantor Equity Partners II, Inc., a blank-check company sponsored by an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald that trades under the CEPT ticker. The deal values Securitize's business at $1.25 billion in pre-money equity.
"Tokenization is what everybody's talking about … but there's nobody publicly traded that does it," Domingo told CNBC. "We will do well in the public market because people want to index themselves to tokenization the same way that people are buying Circle because they want to index themselves to stablecoins."
Tokenization refers to the registration of ownership rights to real-world assets such as stocks, bonds or gold on a blockchain. The process enables more transparent and around-the-clock trading versus traditional methods, according to its proponents — among whom are Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Following the merger, the combined entity Securitize Corp.'s stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SECZ. Shares could begin trading on the exchange as soon as January, according to Domingo.
The company will book $465 million in gross proceeds from the deal. That includes $225 million from private investors including Borderless Capital and Hanwha Investment, and $240 million in the SPAC's trust account, assuming no redemptions.