💸 Figure IPO, Hire Updates, Repos Are Growing, RealT's Response, and More

Summary and Key Takeaways

1. Figure Files for IPO, Great Hires in the Space

Public markets are seeing interesting themes this year, from crypto treasury strategies to crypto companies filing for IPOs and Figure has joined the latter. Along with this news, Figure also recently made a strong hire in Reid Simon from Securitize to now lead Democratized Prime. This is “Figure’s decentralized marketplace that operates as a short-term lending warehouse line for originators in the Figure ecosystem” and they recently announced their first institutional client, Synergy One. This builds on other great hires in the space such as Centrifuge appointing Jürgen Blumberg as COO, coming from two decades at Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and BlackRock - the perfect fit for the Proof-of-Index initiative with S&P. Meanwhile ProvLabs is also growing distribution for Figure’s HELOCs and YLDS yieldcoin through vaults with Animoca Brands. With all of this momentum, no wonder Mike Cagney is going for the Figure IPO! Here’s the question… will it be onchain?

2. Inveniam Invests $20M into MANTRA for Private Asset Tokenization + Data

Private market assets are harder to transact, oftentimes due to lack of data visibility or standardization to trade off of. Inveniam has been on a mission to bring offchain data onchain for easier accessibility, reporting, and more. They raised a large round and now we’re seeing them put it to work, through the acquisition of Armada ETF Advisors in the past and now this partnership with MANTRA, injecting $20M into tokenizing private assets and linking their data from Inveniam’s side with a focus on the UAE. This is a strong sign of confidence in MANTRA and their ecosystem given their $OM plummeting back in April. The more private assets and corresponding offchain data come onchain the more they’ll be able to have increased utility and/or liquidity optionality. This will eventually help those assets receive increased allocations and inclusion into investment strategies - the future of indices.

3. Galaxy Exploring Tokenizing $GLXY on Superstate’s Opening Bell

Native asset tokenization is a more of a focus for the industry now that tokenized equities have taken multiple forms, from being 1:1 backed and custodied to allegedly not being backed by the corresponding amount of shares, if any. This news is of crypto-focused, publicly-traded company, Galaxy, looking to tokenize their common stock and it seems if they do they’ll use Superstate’s new Opening Bell platform to do it. This is also conviction in the tokenization space as part of the motivation behind this is to make their shares have utility in DeFi, such as trading and lending as Mike Novogratz told Bloomberg. 

The increased attention around tokenized stocks has been catalyzed by Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini, Republic and others tokenizing public, private, or both types of shares. Some have received scrutiny around the structure, as mentioned before, so Galaxy being proactive in working with Superstate to do it themselves is a strong move forward for native asset tokenization.

4. RealT Update, Interview Coming Soon

Last week we covered how the City of Detroit is going after RealT for property violations and this week Herwig got to dive into the details with Jean-Marc Jacobson, Co-CEO of RealT. Jean-Marc shared details around the allegations, including an example of some violations being from prior to owning those properties. Ultimately RealT is looking to rectify the situation and they’ve established a property management company. Dive into the details at 12pm ET on YouTube (@STMTVofficial).

5. Repos are Seeing Growth Volume on DLT

Although they don’t get as much attention as other assets, we’ve seen repos grow tremendously over the years. Back in 2023 when we covered it in the Q4 State of Security Tokens report, they had already grown from $1T to processing around $2 trillion per month. Just a couple of years later, Broadridge’s DLR Solution has grown to $4 trillion per month! If in the past they were seeing $1M in savings for every 100K transactions, we’re very curious as to what those savings look like today. Clearly they’re material as they continue to migrate onchain. 

Similarly, JPM partners with HQLA-X and Ownera for their intraday repo solution, kicking off with $5B in volume their first month live. This is going to continue to see new entrants either accept solutions like these or start their own. Regardless it’ll all be interoperable in the future and the ultimate goal is to achieve true Delivery vs. Payment through blockchain, which as Yuval from Digital asset puts it, means the collateral and cash ledgers update at the same time.

This is not financial advice.

RWA Foundation & WALLY DAO

Check out this new ad for RWAs created by STM in-house using AI and a weekend of messing around. Learn More at WALLYDAO.xyz

Monday’s Onchain: Weekly X Spaces

 Join us on Monday’s Onchain to talk about
📰 Tokenization News
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⭐️ Featured Guests and more!

Set your reminder and see you there!

Upcoming Interview: RealT

In this special interview, STM.co CEO Herwig Konings sits down with Jean-Marc Jacobson, Co-CEO of RealT, one of the first companies to pioneer real estate tokenization. RealT has tokenized over $200 million in properties since 2019 and operates globally, but is currently under fire from the City of Detroit over claims of neglect and code violations.

Join us at 12PM for an interview with RealT!

Herwig gets Jean-Marc's perspective on the allegations, what went wrong, and how RealT is responding, including the management company they set up at the end of 2024. We also explore the future of tokenization, how the industry is evolving, and what's next for RealT, from expanding globally to becoming a platform for other tokenized assets.

Think Like Herwig

Hello readers,

A little over a month remains of RWA Summer with August being notoriously the slowest month of the year. I expect things to be quieter but by no means will they subside. Stablecoins added almost $10B since the GENIUS Act passed and my prediction at the beginning of the year of seeing $500B in stablecoin activity isn’t as outrageous as it seemed then as we now approach $300B (about 10% to go). Tokenization continues to dominate the conversations and no doubt we will see more of this as we restart the second half of the year conference circuit in September. 

I’m personally excited to share that the RWA Foundation will be announcing its first initiative next week called the RWA Pod. The RWA Pod will let anyone around the world use their idle crypto like ETH, ARB, and USDC to stake and earn rewards of RWA project tokens including WALLY tokens for the first time ever! The actual yield will go to the RWA Foundation to convert into RWAs for the WALLY DAO treasury. 

If you’re an RWA company with a native token, reach out to me! 

Happy tokenizing, 
Herwig “Happy” Konings
CEO, Security Token Group 

Follow me on X / LinkedIn

Companies of the Week

Company of the Week - Herwig: Inveniam

Company of the Week - Kyle: Broadridge

Find out why and more every Friday live around 12pm EST on LinkedIn or X/ Twitter. Past episodes available on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform! 

Reports

RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook

Check out a report we contributed to: RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook. Led by Brickken, this report brings multiple parties together in diving into tokenization, with STM.co supporting with both data and some of the written sections.

What’s Inside?

✅ A Breakdown of Tokenization and Related Benefits
✅ Key advantages for issuers, investors, and institutions
✅ How the market is evolving and trends shaping adoption in 2025
✅ What’s next? Expert insights on regulation, DeFi integration, institutional involvement, and market growth

STM’s RWA Market Prediction for 2030

STM.co is proud to release a thorough report on our prediction on the tokenized real world asset market growth. This report explores the variety of opportunities within each asset class to capture value on-chain.

Tokenization can be applied to just about any object and asset type. Art, carbon credits, life insurance, and other sub $5 trillion asset classes weren’t even considered in estimates.

In order for STM to derive its 2030 market predictions, the following asset classes were evaluated: currency, M2/M3, real estate, commodities, public equities, private companies and funds, bonds, credit and lending markets.

This is not financial or investment advice.

Helpful Resources

• $30 Trillion by 2030 - STM

• Global Tokenized Real Estate Market Guide 2024 - STM

• TokenizeThis 2024: Highlights and Key Takeaways - STM

• TokenizeThis 2023: Highlights and Key Takeaways - STM

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q4 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q3 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q2 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q1 Extended - STA

• Real-World Asset Tokenization 2023 According to STM - STM

• Tokenizing an Asset in 3 Easy Steps - Security Token Show

• Rich Data in Private Assets - STM

• State of Security Tokens 2022 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Institutional Edition - STA

• Tokenization for Institutions - What You Need to Know - STM, Arca (YouTube)