Tokenized asset firm Securitize continues expanding investor access to private market alternative assets by acquiring the cryptocurrency fund manager Onramp Invest, which has over $40 billion in assets under management (AUM).
Securitize is planning to simplify the access of registered investment advisers (RIA) to private equity, private credit and secondary asset classes with the acquisition of Onramp.
A spokesperson for Securitize declined to disclose the acquisition’s costs to Cointelegraph. At the time of the transaction, Securitize had 150 employees, while Onramp’s headcount is 18 people, the representative noted.
The acquisition brings more than $40 billion in combined assets, which the Onramp platform handles for a community of RIAs across the United States. Onramp’s customer base features some prominent firms in the crypto industry, including asset managers WisdomTree and Valkyrie Invest, exchange-traded fund provider Global X, and crypto media outlet Coindesk — among others.
As a result of the acquisition, RIAs can offer their clients investments in alternative asset classes like private equity, private credit and real estate via Onramp Invest’s dashboard. According to the announcement, Securitize will increase and diversify the investments available to RIAs by giving them direct access to its alternative investment portfolio.
“Onramp already offered RIAs easy access to digital assets, so it is a very natural extension to offer them tokenized alternative assets to complement their portfolios,” Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said, adding:
“Most wealth is generated in private market alternative assets, and bringing Securitize and Onramp together enables registered investment advisers to give their clients access to that wealth generation.”
The latest acquisition builds on a previous partnership between Securitize and Onramp, announced in March 2023. The partnership was focused on distributed access to tokenized private equity funds from investment firms like Hamilton Lane. At the time, Onramp’s platform had RIA firms with a combined AUM of over $35 billion.
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The news comes soon after Securitize started tokenizing equity in the Spanish real estate investment trust Mancipi Partners in June. The firm expects to launch secondary trading on the Avalanche blockchain in September.
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