Securitize

Securitize is one of the most important infrastructure providers for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs). While not an asset manager itself, the firm has quietly become the compliance and issuance backbone behind some of the largest institutional tokenized funds — including BlackRock’s BUIDL.

Rather than competing with traditional finance, Securitize enables it to move on-chain by combining regulated securities infrastructure with blockchain-native settlement.

Origin and Background

Founded in 2017, Securitize set out to solve one of crypto’s hardest problems: how to issue, manage, and transfer regulated securities on public blockchains without breaking existing laws.

The company built regulated entities across jurisdictions, including a U.S. SEC-registered transfer agent and broker-dealer, allowing institutions to tokenize funds, equities, and credit products while remaining compliant with KYC, AML, and investor accreditation requirements.

By the early 2020s, Securitize had positioned itself as a bridge between traditional asset issuers and on-chain markets, years before tokenization became a mainstream institutional narrative.

Major Contributions

• Institutional tokenization infrastructure: Provides end-to-end issuance, compliance, investor onboarding, and lifecycle management for tokenized securities.
• BlackRock’s BUIDL fund: Acts as the tokenization and transfer-agent infrastructure behind BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund, one of the most visible institutional RWA deployments to date.
• Regulated market infrastructure: It operates as an SEC-registered broker-dealer, transfer agent, fund administrator, and regulated ATS, enabling compliant token trading.
• Multi-billion on-chain assets: The platform has tokenized $4B+ in assets and manages billions in tokenized funds and equities.
• Investor access rails: Built systems that allow traditional investors, funds, and treasuries to hold and redeem tokenized assets without interacting directly with crypto-native complexity.

Impact on the Industry

In 2025, Securitize helped shift tokenization from proof-of-concept to production.

Rather than focusing on retail crypto experimentation, the company became synonymous with institutional-grade tokenization, proving that regulated funds could live on-chain without sacrificing compliance, governance, or investor protections.

Its work with BlackRock, alongside partnerships with asset managers, credit funds, and private market issuers, helped establish tokenized Treasuries and funds as credible alternatives to traditional fund structures, not just marketing experiments.

Looking Ahead (2026 and Beyond)

Looking forward, Securitize is positioned to become the default compliance and issuance layer for tokenized capital markets.

As more asset managers tokenize money-market funds, private credit, equities, and structured products, Securitize’s role may increasingly resemble that of a blockchain-native transfer agent and market infrastructure provider.

If regulators continue to permit regulated on-chain settlement, Securitize could help define how trillions of dollars in traditional assets are issued, traded, and used as collateral on public blockchains, quietly powering the rails behind the next phase of institutional crypto adoption.