Inveniam will acquire tokenisation platform Swarm Markets for an undisclosed amount.
The deal will give professional and institutional investors — such as asset managers, private equity and credit firms, custodians and market makers — access to “scalable infrastructure for tokenised assets,” Philipp Pieper, co-founder of Swarm Markets, told DL News.
“This acquisition brings together the two layers institutions have been missing: trusted, machine-readable data for private assets and a regulatory-compliant execution and trading stack,” Pieper said.
Inveniam is an American data analytics firm that specialises in providing clear data about the private-market assets, including real estate and private credit. In October, the company acquired decentralised cloud storage provider Stor for an undisclosed amount.
The Swarm Markets deal highlights the growing competition among crypto companies and fintech firms looking to tokenise private markets.
Crypto exchange Kraken and stock-trading platform Robinhood are just two businesses that have ventured into this space over the past year.
The interest in private markets is understandable. Investment giant BlackRock estimates that the market will grow by over 53% to be worth $20 trillion by 2030.
“The tokenisation of public and private markets is one of the largest infrastructure opportunities in global finance,” Pieper said.
‘Only just beginning’
Despite the growing competition, Pieper is confident that Swarm Markets and Inveniam will make an impact.
“We don’t believe the space is crowded,” he said. “In fact, it is only just beginning. Many companies have announced intentions to enter tokenisation or private markets, but very few have a working product that investors can actually use today.”
Essentially, he argues that, once you parse through the flood of announcements, few companies are doing what the two companies can do.
Pieper noted that Swarm Markets has been live for years, bringing public securities on-chain in a compliant, DeFi-compatible way.
Combine that with Inveniam having brought more than $200 billion of private-market assets to the blockchain, and you’ve got a winning combo, Pieper argues.
Moreover, he argues that private markets are primed for an update.
“Private markets dwarf public markets in terms of market value, but remain largely opaque, slow, and inaccessible,” Pieper said.
“Investors increasingly expect the same transparency, liquidity, and real-time data they experience in public markets. Tokenisation is the path towards that.”
