Securitize, which helps companies issue asset-backed security tokens, raises $12.75 Series A from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Ripple's Xpring fund
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 round is the opening move of an arc that ran seven years: Securitize took $12.75M from crypto-native money — including Coinbase Ventures' earliest checks, which had just begun with Compound's seed and Ripple's Xpring — to build issuance infrastructure for asset-backed security tokens. At the time, that made it a bet on whether regulated securities would ever live on blockchains.
The bet compounded: Securitize later raised a $48M Series B co-led by Morgan Stanley and Blockchain Capital, and in October 2025 filed to go public via a Cantor Fitzgerald SPAC at a $1.25B pre-money valuation. The Series A matters because it shows the strategic investors who seeded tokenization rails before traditional finance validated them.
First-order effects
- Securitize gets capital plus two distribution-aligned backers: Coinbase Ventures ties it to the largest US exchange's ecosystem, while Xpring aligns it with Ripple's push to fund an XRP-adjacent developer economy.
- Coinbase Ventures and Xpring convert balance-sheet cash into early positions in security-token issuance — infrastructure they would need if tokenized assets became a real product line.
Second-order effects
- Morgan Stanley co-leading the 2021 Series B shows the knock-on effect: once crypto funds seeded the category, institutional finance moved to buy credibility and access rather than build issuance tech itself.
- Exchanges and custodians face pressure to offer compliant tokenized-securities rails or cede the issuance layer to specialists like Securitize, shifting competitive lines from trading venues to transfer-agent-style infrastructure.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, tokenization infrastructure consolidates into public markets on its own terms — the Cantor Fitzgerald SPAC at $1.25B pre-money makes Securitize a listed pure-play on the thesis its 2018 backers underwrote.
- The investor sequence — crypto VCs first, banks second, public markets third — becomes a template for how blockchain infrastructure companies graduate, with early strategic investors capturing the re-rating between rounds.
The trend: Security-token infrastructure is graduating from crypto-venture seed bets to bank-backed growth rounds to public listings, with the original strategic investors positioned to capture the value migration.