Tokenization boom may favour fee-earning platforms over Bitcoin, Citrini says
Citrini Research says Wall Street moving assets onto blockchains could create new trading and lending markets, with fee-collecting companies and protocols benefiting more than Bitcoin or ether.
Key points
- Citrini's 79-page report Breaking the Wall, published Thursday, names Securitize, Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle among stock beneficiaries.
- Its crypto basket includes Aerodrome, Maple, Ondo, Pendle, Aave, Uniswap, Ethena, Chainlink, LayerZero and Derive.
- The report warns that rising blockchain activity does not always lift token prices, and flags liquidity, security and legal hurdles.
Tokenization could open a major new market for crypto, but the biggest winners may not be Bitcoin or ether, according to Citrini Research.
Tokenization turns traditional assets into digital tokens that can move between platforms and potentially trade around the clock. A tokenised stock, for instance, could act as collateral for a loan straight from an investor's digital wallet rather than through a traditional brokerage. Citrini said the largest gains may go to companies and projects collecting fees from that activity, adding that it cannot be assumed Bitcoin and ether will reach new all-time highs on the trend.
The firm proposed two baskets. The stock list includes Securitize, which links tokens to the securities they represent, Coinbase and Robinhood for trading and infrastructure, Circle for USDC settlement demand, Figure for tokenised lending, SoFi for stablecoin payments and Bullish, CoinDesk's parent company, which is acquiring share registrar Equiniti.
Citrini said it was more excited about its crypto-token basket, which includes Aerodrome, Maple, Pendle, Ondo, Aave, Uniswap, Ethena, ether.fi, Chainlink, LayerZero and Derive, plus perpetual futures venues Lighter and Variational. It cautioned that trading volumes and network activity do not always translate into higher token prices, and flagged liquidity spread across chains, security risks and legal hurdles around synthetic tokenised stocks.
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