Blockchain.com and NYSE Reach Preliminary Agreement to Offer Tokenized US Stocks and ETFs

MoonPay has agreed to acquire private-markets infrastructure platform North Capital in an all-stock deal worth more than $60 million, as the crypto payments firm pushes further into tokenized assets. The transaction, announced Wednesday, will make North Capital a wholly owned subsidiary of MoonPay once it closes, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Salt Lake City-based North Capital provides technology and regulated financial services for private securities issuers, fund managers, intermediaries and investors, and its platform has handled more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume. Its businesses include SEC-registered broker-dealers, a transfer agent, an investment adviser and PPEX, a registered alternative trading system with more than 1,250 approved assets available for secondary-market trading. MoonPay CEO and founder Ivan Soto-Wright said all financial markets are becoming more technology-driven, but the infrastructure supporting them is still fragmented across different tech stacks, providers and workflows. MoonPay has been expanding beyond its traditional crypto payments business, launching Trade in May and acquiring Solana trading infrastructure provider DFlow and crypto security startup Sodot earlier this year.

Michael Selig, Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said that with the potential for "massive tokenization" to take hold in financial markets, regulators need to adapt existing markets to new technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. Speaking on September 22 at a conference on the U.S. Treasury market held at the New York Fed, Selig said that developments such as tokenization, on-chain finance, and 24/7 trading are likely to change financial markets over the next decade more than the past several decades combined. The CFTC is moving forward on accommodating 24/7 trading; in May it published a staff advisory on 24/7 trading, clearing, and settlement, and in June it sought public comment on matters including 24/7 trading of standard futures contracts, with energy futures such as crude oil in mind. Selig also indicated that he plans to further examine ways to promote the "responsible adoption of stablecoins" by market participants, exchanges, and clearinghouses. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the 17th published an "innovation exemption" establishing a framework under which tokenized U.S.-listed equities can be traded on-chain under certain conditions. With the CLARITY Act, which would set a regulatory framework for crypto asset markets, failing to clear a procedural vote in the Senate, the CFTC and the SEC are each pushing ahead with building systems designed for tokenization and on-chain finance.