Why Tokenized Equities Need Its Own BlackRock BUIDL Catalyst

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When Suzy Singh joined Securitize, she spent most of her day explaining what tokenization was to institutions. Today, she says, those conversations have grown rare, as institutions mostly ask how much tokenization costs and how fast they can move.

As deputy COO of Securitize, Singh shepherds some of the largest asset managers in the world from initial conversation to live product. And from that vantage point, she’s seeing almost every firm zeroing in on tokenization. 

"Every single firm is talking about it," she said on StrataMedia's Talking Tokens podcast recently. "From BNY to JP Morgan to Citi. That shift really started happening at the end of last year, and it wasn't there previously."

The initial catalyst, Singh says, was BlackRock's BUIDL fund, which Securitize helped launch. She thinks BUIDL changed the perception of what was possible in a way that earlier launches hadn't. 

"How did tokenization get even bigger than what it was in 2021? BlackRock came out with BUIDL. That's when everybody started talking about it," she said.

The next step is for tokenized equities, which need their own BUIDL moment, and Singh says Securitize is working toward engineering one.

Digital asset teams at hedge funds, private equity firms, and asset managers already understand tokenization and what it offers, but convincing leadership and boards that the benefits are tangible enough to justify the operational lift remains a challenge. 

"Everybody knows what tokenization is and what it brings to the marketplace," Singh said. "Now it's making it something tangible and proving it to their board in the most efficient manner."

That internal sales process apparently takes longer than you’d assume. Singh says the fastest Securitize has moved a client from first conversation to live product is six months. Most take far longer, as they go through request for information [RFI] processes, due diligence, operational workflow mapping, compliance sign-offs, and fund formation before they introduce a product. 

In a bid to help shorten that window, Securitize chose to tokenize its own equity onchain ($SECZ) when it went public early this month. "What better example to do it with than our own [equity]?" Singh said. "It's like putting your eggs in your own basket versus trying to have other people do it first. We wanted to lead by example."

The company’s status as a listed enterprise also served to alleviate uncertainty that had been weighing on its institutional relationships, Singh said. She pointed to instances when she had been in rooms with investors who were palpably hesitant about tokenization until Securitize’s status as a public company came up, and the posture shifted. 

"They know we're not going anywhere," she said. 

Late this month, Securitize struck a partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald to extend its onchain equity logic into a blockchain-based IPO market. The problem this IPO market is trying to solve became visible when SpaceX allocated shares to retail investors, and third parties moved to tokenize them without actually having the allocation. 

Singh's says a blockchain-based IPO market flips that entirely by allowing issuers to bring tokenized shares to market on day one - the same way Securitize did with $SECZ. 

If a company large enough to move the needle were to do that, she thinks the ripple effects across the IPO market would be significant. "If Microsoft is doing it or SpaceX is doing it, that's going to make other people start thinking as to why are we not?"

It appears distribution underpins almost everything Securitize is building towards. U.S. equity products are largely inaccessible to offshore investors, and in some countries, bank accounts can't hold U.S. dollar-denominated assets at all, making it impossible to invest in products like money market funds. 

Singh argues that tokenization solves that access problem directly, and the next frontier she's watching closely is retail. Institutions are already in motion, forming strategies and building products. 

Unlocking retail will change the scale of the entire space, Singh thinks. "Once retail starts coming in and they understand the difference between having a tokenized money market fund and having a bitcoin or a memecoin, that's when the space is going to change even more," she said.

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

For today’s episode, I interviewed Suzy Singh, Deputy Chief Operating Officer at Securitize, to pull back the curtain on what institutional tokenization interest looks like day to day.

Suzy outlines why everything you're seeing announced publicly has been in the works for six to twenty-four months behind the scenes, then breaks down why Securitize tokenized its own equity on day one of going public. 

Then Suzy gets into what its recent Cantor Fitzgerald partnership is really trying to unlock for blockchain-based IPOs, and why she thinks the next major wave of adoption in this space isn't going to come from institutions. 

TIMESTAMPS:

0:01 What tokenization means and why it matters

01:03 Why more institutions are talking about tokenization

03:25 Where demand is coming from across financial firms

05:28 The long timeline from first conversation to launch

09:11 How going public changed Securitize’s credibility

14:20 Why issuer-sponsored tokenized equities matter

19:56 IPOs, retail adoption, and the future of onchain markets

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This episode is sponsored by Securitize, the proven leader in tokenized funds, equities, and private markets. Discover more at securitize.io. 

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