📈 Securitize Returns to Tokenized Stocks, Trump Tower Tokens are Coming, SWIFT Upgrades and More

Summary and Key Takeaways

1. Securitize Returns to Tokenized Stocks with FG Nexus

While Securitize has lately focused on tokenized funds, most notably those from BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Apollo to name a few, they were actually early movers in tokenizing stocks. Back in 2021 they tokenized Exodus $EXOD ( ▲ 5.16% ) and to this day they still trade on their ATS. Now they’re going back to that with FG Nexus’s $FGNX ( ▲ 1.2% ) both common and preferred stock, natively tokenized on Ethereum. Thanks to the regular dividends paid by the ETH treasury company to preferred stock investors ($FGNXP) we can expect Securitize’s transfer agent to facilitate them using stablecoins. This news comes just a week after Superstate announced they’ll be tokenizing another ETH treasury company, SharpLink, on their Opening Bell platform.

This trend of treasury companies will only continue to grow however the overall theme this year has been tokenized stocks, from both a scrutiny and adoption perspective. Robinhood, Backed’s xStocks, and Swarm’s (some examples) mirror tokens are solving the access problem for non-US investors while US-based Securitize and Superstate are focusing on natively tokenizing public company shares. As Chainlink works on bringing corporate actions onchain at institutional levels with the DTCC and 20+ others (see last week’s edition), Securitize and Superstate are already setting up the rails to plug in with existing issuers.

2. Trump Tower Tokens are Coming, World Liberty Partners with Mantle

The Trump and Witkoff Families are making headlines again, expanding their USD1 stablecoin to Mantle just as the Mantle’s Tokenization-as-a-Service platform gets announced at Token2049. Building on this news, Zach Witkoff asked the audience “What if I told you that you could go on an exchange and buy one token of Trump Tower Dubai?” signaling a multi-asset expansion past their current stablecoin and planned commodities. This could quickly evolve to other RWAs but it makes sense they’re getting users accustomed to the World Liberty Financial brand, hence the start with tokenized cash, a planned app and debit card attached to it, and of course the WLFI governance token. One would’ve expected WLFI to spike amid the news however it stayed relatively flat, although which one did benefit? Mantle’s MNT up 25% on the week at the time of writing. The Trumps and Witkoffs are building an ecosystem around World Liberty which raises the next question, which DeFi partners will be included next?

3. Republic to Complete INX Acquisition on Wednesday 10/8

What started over 2 years ago in June 2023 as a 9.5% investment (likely to not trigger FINRA issues) and a public MOU for Republic to buy 100% of INX has now finally been completed. As of April of this year the INX business was valued at $60 million and this Wednesday, October 8th is the scheduled closing date. This has a material impact on the INX token which will briefly stop trading on Thursday at 7am and will receive the balance of $34.3 million that was on its books. The token will not subside and continue to function according to the latest announcement and INX Founder/ CEO Shy Datika will roll over shares into Republic too. 

This is very eventful for the industry as it validates we are moving into a consolidation period where bigger players will M&A to grow and fast track licenses and operations. It’s also one that is of historical context as INX originally purchased their FINRA license to trade RWAs from Open Finance Network, which was the original and first broker to go live with tokenized equity instruments with FINRA approval to do so back in December of 2018! The first thing we can expect is the Republic Note to get listed on the INX.One platform and future offerings to follow suit. It’s official, Republic finally has a live ATS to use and bring its own billions in crowdfunded assets to this marketplace.

4. SWIFT Announces Blockchain Ledger Integration for Cross-Border Payments, Expands Tokenized Fund Workflows

Aside from stablecoins, vaults, M&A and heavy investments, and crypto IPOs, the other big theme this year is infrastructure. Many heavyweights have been experimenting for years but 2025 is putting more pressure on moving on from the Proof of Concepts and into in-production use cases. This week we heard SWIFT is working with Consensys to integrate a blockchain-based ledger to its infrastructure, starting with 30 financial institutions from around the globe. Some examples include Bank of America, Banorte, Banco Santander, First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC, Mizuho, Royal Bank of Canada, and OCBC. Focusing on 24/7, cross-jurisdictional payments this is really meant to be for commercial and central banks rather than the retail user, however it’s the plumbing needed to support products and services that will ultimately also reach the retail customer. Their services are connected to 11,500+ institutions in over 200 countries so it makes sense to have experimented for years before going about this more aggressively, however it’s clear this year’s momentum is pushing towards a commercially-viable solution.

Separately, SWIFT is also continuing their work from Project Guardian with UBS and Chainlink. What if institutions could benefit from tokenization without having to rebuild everything? That’s the goal. They’re enhancing workflows for tokenized funds while allowing them to participate using the same messaging system they’re accustomed to. Essentially what Chainlink is powering is the ability to send normal ISO20022 messages (Swift messaging) and convert them to instructions compatible with smart contracts in a tokenized fund (such as issuance or redemption on UBS Tokenize) using the Chainlink Digital Transfer Agent (DTA) technical standard. If this expands to full production, it could help bring the $100T+ global fund industry onchain a whole lot faster.

5. Telegram to Offer 35 xStocks on App’s Wallet This Month

Telegram has over 1 billion monthly active users. Many of them will soon get access to tokenized stocks which have been making a boom all summer long with Robinhood rolling it out as well as recently Ondo’s Global Markets dominating the scene. However many other players like ranging back as far as Swarm Markets to more recent players like Dinari and xStocks (Backed), the concept of Wall Street onchain could be the next big thing to take off after stablecoins have proven to. The same way the American dollar benefits from stablecoins, so do capital markets adding new pools of liquidity. 

It comes with much nuance and debate about market structure, offering structure, and new capabilities (as Herwig likes to point out, international investors have better tools and access to US equities than Americans do because tokenization hasn’t been made possible to your everyday citizen here), but the genie is out of the bottle and Telegram plans to bring a whole lot of users to it in careful, limited roll out to start of 35 stocks in unspecified jurisdictions.

This is not financial advice.

RWA Foundation & WALLY DAO Updates

The RWA Foundation introduced the RWA Pod as “A permissionless way for anyone to support RWAs using crypto with multiple RWA project tokens as yield.”

In partnership with PERQ, the RWA Pod allows you to deposit ETH, USDC, ARB, and S/ Sonic. Participants will receive tokens on multiple blockchain protocols related to RWA projects that the RWA Foundation has qualified and selected as Founding Members.

What’s the update this week? What’s the RWA Pod TVL? Hear directly from your RWA Pod Host Ray Buckton!

Interested in watching the interviews with Julian from IXS and Will from Jade City? They’re now available on X and on YouTube, go ahead and check them out 👇!

STM.co Data

This is not financial advice.

Think Like Herwig

Hello readers,

There will be lots of partnerships and announcements formed as a result of the recent Asian crypto conference tour coming to an end. Everyone’s focus is on Uptober as many speculate a boom due to M2 money supply conditions and the concept that the 4 year cycle may no longer hold true - something that I never really heard questioned seriously before in the past.

As we make our way towards $500T in stablecoins + RWAs (what it’s seemingly looking like for EOY expectations) the big banks and asset managers are only getting more giddy with excitement as it has become fully en vogue to now say you’re using blockchain again. 

I’m closely monitoring the crypto markets as a scenario that leads to massive growth in this sector will undoubtedly lead to a boom in stablecoin adoption and eventually RWAs as DeFi and TradFi continue to engage and bridge into each other. Meanwhile, it feels like we’re going to have more consortiums and stablecoins than people soon!

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

Follow me on X / LinkedIn

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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)