How to Invest in Tokenized Assets: The PublicFi vs PrivateFi Strategy
Wondering how to invest in tokenized assets? Wall Street is splitting into two distinct tracks: PublicFi and PrivateFi. Here is why we are placing massive bets on both sides and why you are still incredibly early.
When people originally thought about what blockchain would become, the vision was simple. The early pioneers dreamed of a financial system with absolutely zero middlemen. They believed we would no longer need brokers, transfer agents, or custodians. They believed autonomous code would run the world and legacy giants like the DTCC or Nasdaq would simply fade away.
While that is a beautiful concept, it is a terrible investment thesis.
If you want to capture the greatest migration of wealth in human history, you have to look at how Wall Street actually operates. Wall Street will never put a 50 billion dollar Treasury fund or a Fortune 500 equity on an autonomous protocol without a middleman. When things go wrong, institutions need a regulated entity they can hold legally accountable. They demand compliance, identity verification, and legal safety nets.
The traditional financial system is not merging into one giant decentralized network. Instead, it is actively splitting into a highly regulated, dual track system. Welcome to the era of PublicFi and PrivateFi.
If you are wondering how to invest in tokenized assets, the answer is not picking just one winner. We personally are placing bets on both sides. Here is the exact breakdown of the new financial landscape, the staggering growth projections, and the strategy to cover all your bases while we are still so early in the game.
The Two Paths of Tokenization
When traditional finance maps out the future, they are building a dual infrastructure system. There is no right or wrong path here. There are simply different tools for different jobs.
PublicFi is the open storefront. This is the transparent, high speed, retail facing side of tokenization. It lives on public blockchains but is heavily regulated by modern financial gatekeepers. It is the retail storefront where assets are openly traded and global price discovery happens. Key players include Securitize, Solana, Jump Crypto, and Jupiter. Securitize is currently the apex predator here. They recently received historic FINRA approvals to custody tokenized stocks and underwrite on-chain IPOs. Because they are undergoing a SPAC merger, you cannot find them under their final ticker yet.
To invest today, you have to look at Cantor Equity Partners ($CEPT), which is the SPAC taking them public. Once finalized, it will transition to the $SECZ ticker.
PrivateFi is the institutional plumbing. This is the dark pool. It is the hidden, privacy preserving backend where the massive institutional whales trade. It has strict entry rules, but once you are inside the club, you can transact seamlessly. This is the unseen, backend wholesale clearinghouse. Key players include the Canton Network, the DTCC (which settles nearly all U.S. market trades), NASDAQ, Broadridge, Clearstream, and tier 1 banks.
If you want proof that PrivateFi is winning the backend, look at the news that just dropped. HQLAᵡ just announced they are migrating away from legacy tech and building exclusively on the Canton Network, backed by fresh investment from Broadridge and Digital Asset. Even bigger, Deutsche Börse’s post trade giant, Clearstream, is utilizing Canton's Daml language for its D7 platform. And the kicker? They received an SEC No Action Letter. While public crypto companies fight the SEC in court, PrivateFi cartels are quietly shaking hands with regulators and getting express permission to operate. You can now get direct exposure to this backend network through traditional brokerage accounts. 21Shares just launched $TCAN on the Nasdaq, which is the first regulated spot ETF providing direct exposure to Canton Coin. You can also look at Canton Strategic Holdings (CNTN) for equity exposure.
Why Wall Street Needs Both
Why can we not just run everything on Solana or everything on Canton? Because capital markets require both massive transparency and absolute privacy, depending on the specific transaction.
Look at what the 940 billion dollar asset manager Apollo Global Management is doing. They are playing both sides perfectly. When Apollo needs to settle massive institutional private credit syndications with other banks, they use the unseen plumbing of PrivateFi to ensure zero information leakage. But when Apollo wants to distribute that yield to the broader crypto economy, they use PublicFi. They recently acquired 9 percent of the governance tokens for Morpho, a public decentralized lending protocol, to build public vaults for their private assets. You settle the institutional debt in PrivateFi, and you farm the retail liquidity in PublicFi.
The Bottom Line: We Are Still Early
We are rapidly moving past the experimental phase. Tokenized real world assets currently account for over 31 billion dollars on chain, but the growth estimates from Wall Street are staggering. Boston Consulting Group projects tokenized assets will reach 16 Trillion dollars by 2030. JPMorgan forecasts the market could hit 13 Trillion dollars by 2030. McKinsey and Company puts their conservative estimate at 2 Trillion to 4 Trillion dollars by the end of the decade.
We are staring down a multi trillion dollar pipeline. The masses have not woken up to this yet. You are incredibly early to the most significant infrastructure upgrade in the history of capital markets.
The Barbell Portfolio Strategy
You cannot just pick one side of this equation. If you only buy pure crypto tokens, you miss the institutional dark pools. If you only buy private enterprise infrastructure, you miss the explosive retail growth of the new public stock market.
To cover all your bases, you need a Barbell Portfolio that owns the infrastructure for both tracks. Own the PublicFi storefront by holding the Securitize ($CEPT) SPAC and Solana to capture retail volume, transparent trading, and public equity issuance. This is your high growth, retail driven aggressive play.
Own the PrivateFi plumbing by buying the new TCAN ETF or Canton Strategic Holdings $CNTN to capture the unseen migration of backend bank settlements. This is your institutional shadow banking anchor. Own the bridges by allocating to Chainlink and RedStone. Whether an asset trades publicly on Solana or privately on Canton, it still needs an oracle to verify its real world price.
Stop betting on the old vision of a world without middlemen. Wall Street is not dying. Wall Street is upgrading. Own the open storefronts, own the gated VIP clubs, and let the institutions pay you tolls on both ends.
Stop guessing how Wall Street is adopting crypto.
We just updated the Digital Finance Family Tree to include the HQLAᵡ and Clearstream migrations to the Canton Network. Subscribe to Digital Finance Daily for your free copy.
Digital Finance Daily is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing contained in this post constitutes investment, legal, or tax advice. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent a recommendation to buy or sell any security or digital asset. Investing in tokenized assets and cryptocurrencies involves significant risk, and you should always perform your own due diligence or consult with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decisions. The author may hold positions in the assets mentioned.