Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo Reacts to New Tokenized Securities Guidance

New regulatory guidance on tokenized securities dropped this week, and the industry is already split on what it means. Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, weighed in during a recent interview — and the conversation touched on everything from compliance costs to what comes next for digital asset securities broadly.

The guidance lays out specific requirements for how tokenized securities can be issued and traded. Companies operating in the space must now meet a defined set of compliance measures that align with existing securities law. Regulators framed it as a clarification move — a way to reduce the ambiguity that has hung over the sector for years and make it easier for blockchain-based financial instruments to sit alongside traditional ones. For firms like Securitize, which has built its entire business model around digital asset securities, the new rules aren’t abstract. They land directly on day-to-day operations, product development, and how the company talks to its clients about risk.

Not everyone is relieved.

A Mixed Reception Across the Industry

Some players see the guidance as long overdue. Tokenized securities have been stuck in a kind of regulatory gray zone, and clearer rules — even strict ones — can actually unlock deal flow that was sitting on the sidelines waiting for certainty. Institutional investors, in particular, tend to move slowly when the legal ground feels soft. A defined framework gives them something to point to.

But others aren’t so sure. The concern is that the compliance burden could be heavy enough to slow things down rather than speed them up. Companies may need to rebuild parts of their internal infrastructure, bring in outside legal counsel, and rethink how they handle record-keeping and transaction transparency. That’s not cheap. And for smaller firms without Securitize’s resources, it could be pretty much impossible to absorb quickly.

So the picture is messy. Progress, probably — but not a clean win.

Securitize itself hasn’t put out a formal statement on specific operational changes it plans to make. Domingo spoke in general terms about the company’s intent to stay compliant while continuing to push into new opportunities in the tokenized securities market. No detailed roadmap yet. Unclear when one might come.

Technical Rules and Investor Protection

The guidance doesn’t just deal with legal structure — it gets into the technical side too. There are clear protocols outlined for how blockchain technology should actually be used to stay on the right side of existing law. Record-keeping standards. Transaction transparency requirements. The kind of nuts-and-bolts stuff that compliance teams will be working through for months.

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And there’s a real emphasis on investor protection throughout the document. The rules are written to ensure that tokenized securities carry the same basic level of security and reliability that investors expect from traditional financial instruments. That’s a significant signal. Regulators aren’t treating tokenized securities as a separate, lighter category — they want the same safeguards, just expressed through new technology.

For Securitize and its peers, that means the bar is high. It’s not enough to be innovative. The systems have to hold up under scrutiny, and the investor experience has to be solid. That’s a harder thing to build than a slick interface.

The guidance is also expected to shape how traditional financial institutions think about tokenization as a tool for capital raising. By laying down explicit rules, regulators are basically telling banks, asset managers, and funds: here’s the lane you can drive in. Some of them will take that as an invitation. Others will wait to see how early movers fare before committing resources.

What Happens After the Dust Settles

Regulators have signaled they’re open to feedback. As industry players respond to the new framework — some through public comment, some through direct engagement — further adjustments are possible. The guidance isn’t necessarily the final word. It’s more like a first official draft of something that will keep getting refined.

Securitize is likely to be deep in those conversations. The company has the scale and the regulatory relationships to have a real voice in where the rules go from here. Whether that influence translates into meaningful changes to the framework, or whether the current version sticks largely as written, won’t be clear for a while.

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What’s certain is that the industry is now in an adjustment period. Firms are mapping their current operations against the new requirements, figuring out where the gaps are, and deciding how fast they need to move. Some will adapt quickly. Others will struggle.

The guidance also touches on how tokenized securities should be perceived by investors going forward — regulators want the instruments to be seen as credible, not experimental. That reputational push matters as much as the technical requirements.

Securitize, for now, is watching how the broader market responds before making any public commitments on next steps.