🤝 Security Token Prime Insights: 12/16/2024

Exclusive Intelligence for Security Token Prime Members

December 16, 2024

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Summary and Key Takeaways

1. RWA Foundation to Release Whitepaper Sharing Its Vision

With the successful launch of the RWA Foundation last month, we’ve seen the community grow incredibly fast! With the X account reaching over 1,000 followers and the telegram group having hundreds of active RWA crypto natives, the interest in the vision behind the RWA Foundation is mounting. Officially revealed on X, the Whitepaper will be released within this month so keep your eyes peeled and make sure you follow! 

2. SocGen 2020 Bond Complete’s Lifecycle

Although institutional bond issuances have really picked up these last couple of years, they’ve been issued since much earlier, like Societe Generale in 2020. Just a few days ago, these tokenized bonds were used as collateral through Societe Generale - FORGE in exchange for CBDC. The bond was on Ethereum while the CBDC on Banque de France’s DL3S blockchain

This helps show validation for blockchain technology in collateral markets with SocGen claiming to be the first on-chain repo with a Eurosystem central bank. As the European Central Bank trials come to an end, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an extension with repo transactions and different asset types used as collateral as its focus.

3. Securitize Grabs Crypto Veteran Michael Sonnenshein as COO

Grayscale has grown into one of the largest crypto asset managers and asset managers in general under his helm as CEO. Now his talents are headed for Securitize as they announced last week his new role as COO. Michael brings a unique breed of experience between crypto and traditional finance that is needed for a role like this and signals a flight of much needed top-tier talent towards RWAs.

4. Funding is Flowing: Avalanche, Inveniam, AgriDex, Exabits

Money has been flowing into the RWA sector this past week. Among other areas, a big one for Avalanche is tokenizing real world assets as they list in their press release for raising $250 million, led by Galaxy, Dragonfly, and ParaFi. This locked-token sale comes as Avalanche prepares for their Avalanche9000 upgrade, with their Retro9000 campaign active now.

Inveniam has been a pioneer in the space and has resurfaced in the headlines with AI firm G42 investing an undisclosed amount that brings them to $120 million in total raised. Inveniam focuses on bridging the gap between private market assets and their respective data using blockchain, as legacy systems are inefficient and won’t be able to support real time pricing - something critical as RWAs continue to tokenize.

AgriDex also raised this past week, with $4 million to back their agricultural commodities tokenization platform. Portal Ventures led this offering which was a mix of equity and $AGRI utility/ governance tokens, valuing AgriDex at $28.5M. The Solana-based platform is now looking to tokenize over $4.5B in pending trade commitments according to The Block.

Portal Ventures also led the previous round of this update: Exabits raised $15 million for their tokenized high-end GPU clusters platform, led by Hack VC. This would be able to make computing more investable, for which Exabits has been incubated at multiple institutions like Stanford Blockchain Accelerator and Berkeley Xcelerator. As AI adoption continues to grow, so will the need for compute resources and making them investable as a security token is synergistic, especially with a future where AI’s trade with each other via on-chain economies.

5. Blockchain Capital’s Dividend and Blockchain Upgrade

One of the very first tokenized funds, Blockchain Capital ($BCAP), is making a couple moves, starting with a dividend of $0.25 per token, representing 25% return on the initial investment of $1 per $BCAP. This will be paid in USDC on January 28th, 2025. Now comes the second part of the announcement, migrating to ZKsync. 

Blockchain Capital originally tokenized their fund on Ethereum which at the time made the most sense, however with evolving technology and ecosystems they’ve chosen to move to ZKsync. As an Ethereum layer 2, ZKsync offers faster and cheaper transactions which will be helpful as $BCAP anticipates more dividend distributions in the future. With over 850 investors from their 2017 security token offering, it’s proper they leverage those benefits, including zero-knowledge proofs which Securitize and Circle support as well, as they continue to grow.

Notable Market Headlines

Institutional Activity

NEW STM REPORT NOW AVAILABLE

Security Token Market is proud to release November 2024’s market report, analyzing secondary market activity and benchmarking against the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20).

In this month’s market report, we have meticulously tracked 733 security tokens spanning across 35 marketplaces and 10 blockchains.

Sections include:

  • Key Takeaways

  • CoinDesk 20 Index Benchmark

  • Quantitative Highlights

  • Asset Class Breakdown

  • On-Chain Liquidity Products

  • Platform Spotlight: Hashnote

  • New Tokens and Announcements

STM Data

Did you catch Friday’s graph on the STM X account? Hashnote’s US Yield Coin (USYC) is growing quickly, with at the time of the post being up an impressive 60.52% since December 1st, reaching $877M AUM.

USYC is the on-chain representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund which invests primarily in reverse repo on U.S. Government backed securities. USYC lets you earn short-term risk free returns.

What’s the update? Markets don’t sleep and now $USYC is at $902M. When will it hit $1B?

For more data insights and charts, visit STM.Co!

Security Token Prime is Made Possible Thanks to Our Enterprise Partners

Hello readers,

Bitcoin continues to smash records as we near Trump taking office. His endorsement of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve has sent the game theory behind Bitcoin to a new league where you are forced to play out the scenario of every country in the world racing to buy the limited amount of Bitcoin that exists. The irony of El Salvador finding an untapped gold reserve that could flood the gold market is beyond me - I thought it was an opinion article at first! 

This next cycle has already embraced RWAs. This is proven by the success of stablecoins, the growing popularity of on chain money markets, and the fact that there are now 2 RWA crypto tokens in the top 50… well $ONDO is at #54 but seems like a top 50 soon enough. The point is RWAs are very much an understood concept now, even if it is just on a basic level. 

Crypto natives understand they need to go into stablecoins and yieldcoins and the RWA market will continue to offer more new asset tokens to choose from. The RWA Foundation will be on the forefront of educating and supporting this sector. Stay tuned for our Whitepaper release soon! 

Happy tokenizing,
Herwig “Happy” Konings
CEO, Security Token Group 
Follow me on X / LinkedIn

Events

Recent Recordings

  • (NEW) AI In Digital Assets Marketing and PR with Rob Gonda (Recording Link)

  • Navigating PR Between TradFi and Web3 Media with Amsterdam Group (Recording Link)

  • Beyond the Hype: Cracking the Code of Successful Asset Tokenization with BlockInvest and Polygon (Recording Link)

  • Risk Management in Tokenized Assets with Moody's and Particula (Recording Link)

  • Blockchain Meets Construction with Inveniam & LV8R Labs (Recording Link)

  • Non-Performing Loans with BlockInvest and Davis & Morgan (Recording Link)

  • Issuer Spotlight: Tuscany National Token (Recording Link)

  • Platform Spotlight: Block Time Financial (Recording Link)

  • The TradFi/DeFi Hybrid with Maple, Centrifuge and Swarm (Recording Link)

  • Platform Spotlight: REtokens' New Platform with Tyler Vinson and David Kirschbaum (Recording Link)

  • Powers Hour: New SEC “Dealer” Rule Expansion and DeFi Impacts (Recording Link)

TokenizeThis Workshop Tour Around the US

Get your tickets today for a full day masterclass around tokenization from A to Z. There continues to be a massive education gap in the industry and off the success of the original workshop in Miami last May, we’ve decided to go nationwide. We’ll be visiting NYC, Houston, Boston, LA, SF, Atlanta, and Chicago, check out workshop.stm.co for more information. Use code PRIME for 15% off.

Company of the Week - Herwig: Securitize
Company of the Week - Kyle: Akemona

Find out why and more every Friday live around 2pm EST on LinkedIn or X/ Twitter. Past episodes available on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform! 

Helpful Resources

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