What are the common challenges startups face in equity tokenisation?

The most common challenges include navigating FCA regulatory requirements, selecting the right tokenisation platform, structuring the legal framework for tokenised equity, educating investors unfamiliar with digital securities, and ensuring compliance with the UK Digital Securities Sandbox rules.

What are tokenisation platforms and how do they work?

Tokenisation platforms are regulated technology providers that convert equity or other assets into digital tokens on a blockchain or distributed ledger. In the UK, platforms operating under FCA oversight include those participating in the Digital Securities Sandbox. They handle the technical issuance, custody, and transfer of tokenised securities.

What financial insights should founders know before tokenising equity?

Founders should understand the cost structure of tokenisation (legal, platform, and compliance fees), the valuation implications of fractional ownership, how tokenised equity differs from traditional equity crowdfunding, and the tax treatment of digital securities under UK law.

What investor strategies apply to tokenised equity?

Investors in tokenised equity can benefit from fractional ownership of high-value assets, improved liquidity through secondary market trading on regulated platforms, portfolio diversification across early-stage UK startups, and participation in deals previously accessible only to institutional investors.

What is the UK regulatory landscape for equity tokenisation?

The UK regulatory landscape is governed primarily by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and HM Treasury. Key frameworks include the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), and ongoing FCA consultations on the treatment of tokenised securities. The UK is positioning itself as a global leader in regulated digital securities.

What is equity tokenisation?

Equity tokenisation is the process of converting ownership rights in a company into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain or distributed ledger. These tokens represent shares or equity stakes and can be transferred, traded, or held digitally, subject to regulatory compliance. In the UK, tokenised equity is treated as a regulated financial instrument under FCA oversight.

Digital Securities for UK Startups

Latest Headline

So, Can Tokenisation Make a Founder's Location Irrelevant to Whether They Can Raise?

A story tip landed in our inbox this week pointing to a piece in Private Markets Profile on what it called building investable regions: the idea that tokenisation can widen who is able to invest in a given market by removing geography as a barrier to access. It is a genuinely useful frame, and it ra

RWA & TOKENISATION

Shawn Jhanji

4 days ago6 min read

RWA & TOKENISATION

Standfirst: The London based tokenisation platform has spent the summer methodically collecting fiduciary and transfer agency licences across four jurisdictions, a strategy that says as much about the shape of the tokenised asset market as any single product launch would. Ctrl Alt Technologies has been authorised by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission to provide fiduciary and digital transfer agency services, the fourth regulatory licence the London based tokenisation firm has secured globally. The licences were confirmed in August and were flagged to Tokenising Startups as worth revisiting for what they reveal about how tokenisation infrastructure actually gets built, one jurisdiction at a time. They sit alongside Ctrl Alt's existing authorisations from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, where it was the first provider authorised to conduct issuer services, and the Central Bank of Ireland. The two Guernsey licences, a Fiduciar

Ctrl Alt Completes a Four Jurisdiction Licence Set for Tokenisation With Guernsey Authorisation

Standfirst: The London based tokenisation platform has spent the summer methodically collecting fiduciary and transfer agency licences across four jurisdictions, a strategy that says as much about the shape of the tokenised asset market as any single product launch would.

Shawn Jhanji

14 hours ago3 min read

Carlos Domingo, co-founder and chief executive of Securitize, has a blunt pitch for public companies: you probably do not know who owns your own stock, and blockchain can fix that. He is using his own company's shares to make the case. Securitize listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ on 2 July 2026, and on the same day tokenised 295 million dollars of its own common stock on the Solana and Avalanche blockchains, the largest tokenised equity event to date. The company is pitching onchain records as the authoritative shareholder register for public companies, replacing a system built around the Depository Trust Company that Domingo argues obscures who actually holds a company's shares. The problem Domingo is describing is structural rather than novel. When an investor buys stock through a brokerage, they do not appear on the issuing company's books as a direct owner. Instead, the DTC holds shares in street name through a chain of custodians and brokers, so the

Securitize's CEO Says Public Companies Have Lost Track of Their Own Shareholders. His Fix Is an Onchain Register

Carlos Domingo, co-founder and chief executive of Securitize, has a blunt pitch for public companies: you probably do not know who owns your own stock, and blockchain can fix that. He is using his own company's shares to make the case.

Shawn Jhanji

2 days ago3 min read

Hiten Patel, Oliver Wyman's global head of financial infrastructure, technology and services, has put a specific number on a question that UK tokenisation platforms, custodians and investors keep asking in vaguer terms: how much of today's financial market infrastructure revenue is actually at stake. Speaking to The Fintech Times, Patel separated two figures that he says are routinely collapsed into a single headline. The first is 45 billion dollars, his estimate of existing financial market infrastructure revenue, the fees earned today from settlement, custody, collateral management and related services, that could migrate onto tokenised, token native rails as the technology matures. The second is 25 billion dollars, a distinct estimate of gross new revenue that tokenisation could create outright, through products and services that are not possible on legacy rails at all. Treating these as one number, Patel argues, overstates the near term opportunity and confuses two very diffe

Oliver Wyman Puts a 45 Billion Dollar Price Tag on the Financial Market Infrastructure Revenue Tokenisation Could Move Onto New Rails

Hiten Patel, Oliver Wyman's global head of financial infrastructure, technology and services, has put a specific number on a question that UK tokenisation platforms, custodians and investors keep asking in vaguer terms: how much of today's financial market infrastructure revenue is actually at stake

Shawn Jhanji

3 days ago3 min read

INVESTING & FINANCE

One year after the FCA licensed the London Stock Exchange to run PISCES, the picture is thinner on volume than the framework's backers hoped, but wider than a first look at any single operator suggests. Count all four approved venues together and PISCES has hosted at least six auctions across five companies, including one that is trading right now. The number that has circulated this week, four auctions across three companies, describes only the London Stock Exchange's own Private Securities Market, where Wayve, Moneybox and an ownership structure linked to Oxford Science Enterprises have traded. Oxford Science Enterprises has run its auctions quarterly; Wayve and Moneybox each treated theirs as a one-off event. That is a real number, but it is not the whole of PISCES, and reporting it as such understates a framework that now has four separate operators actively running auctions on different cadences. JP Jenkins, not the LSE, ran the very first PISCES auction of any kind. Board g

PISCES Turns One With Six Auctions Across Five Companies Once All Four Operators Are Counted, Including a Live Trade Right Now

One year after the FCA licensed the London Stock Exchange to run PISCES, the picture is thinner on volume than the framework's backers hoped, but wider than a first look at any single operator suggests. Count all four approved venues together and PISCES has hosted at least six auctions across five companies, including one that is trading right now. The number that has circulated this week, four auctions across three companies, describes only the London Stock Exchange's own

Shawn Jhanji

1 day ago4 min read

AMC Entertainment chief executive Adam Aron has demanded that Robinhood immediately stop issuing tokens tracking AMC's share price, escalating a public dispute that puts a sharp UK relevant question on the table: what happens to tokenised equity when the underlying issuer never agreed to it. Aron said Robinhood has offered tokens tied to AMC and more than 190 other listed companies without seeking those companies' knowledge or consent. He argues the products fail to comply with US securities law and offer buyers no real protection, and has said he intends to raise the matter directly with the Securities and Exchange Commission if Robinhood does not comply. Robinhood's chief legal officer, Dan Gallagher, rejected the demand outright, telling Aron to send his lawyers. Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev backed the response within minutes, saying the company stands behind its stock. Gamestop. No lawsuit or bbby SEC enforcement action had been announced at the time of writing.

AMC Chief Executive Demands Robinhood Halt Unauthorised AMC Stock Tokens as Robinhood Refuses and Threatens to Involve the SEC

AMC Entertainment chief executive Adam Aron has demanded that Robinhood immediately stop issuing tokens tracking AMC's share price, escalating a public dispute that puts a sharp UK relevant question on the table: what happens to tokenised equity when the underlying issuer never agreed to it.

Shawn Jhanji

3 days ago3 min read

While public software stocks have taken a beating and social feeds have spent six weeks declaring a SaaSpocalypse, one UK seed investor's own portfolio numbers tell a calmer story about what is actually happening inside early stage software companies. Haatch, the Stamford based seed investor known for its SEIS and EIS fund programme, tracks roughly 200 early stage B2B software companies across fintech, vertical SaaS, healthtech and edtech. Across that cohort, the firm says median revenue growth has run at around 50 per cent annualised over the past two years. Median headcount growth over the same period was zero. Haatch's own reading of its data is that the SaaSpocalypse framing, like most narratives that move this fast, is partly right, partly overblown and mostly missing the point. What has genuinely changed is not that early stage software companies are collapsing, it is that they are growing revenue without growing headcount, an efficiency shift rather than a downturn. The apoc

Haatch Portfolio Data Undercuts the SaaSpocalypse Narrative as Revenue Keeps Growing While Headcount Stands Still

While public software stocks have taken a beating and social feeds have spent six weeks declaring a SaaSpocalypse, one UK seed investor's own portfolio numbers tell a calmer story about what is actually happening inside early stage software companies.

Shawn Jhanji

3 days ago2 min read

Startup News

London based AI Score has raised 5.4 million dollars in seed funding to scale a platform that gives organisations visibility and control over how generative and agentic AI is actually used across their operations, a founder access story that sits squarely in the UK's crowded but under capitalised enterprise software seed market. The round was led by Fuel Ventures, with continued backing from founding investor GALLOS Technologies. Additional investors include Alan Morgan, co-founder of MMC Ventures, Mo El Husseiny, managing partner at Ventura Capital, and Robert Mann, founding partner at Marshall Bridge Ventures. The round follows a 1 million dollar pre-seed round in November 2025. AI Score was founded by Alex Harland, a former National Cyber Security Centre executive, alongside Benita Tibb. The platform sits between an organisation's written AI policy and the systems, employees and agents actually using AI day to day, continuously monitoring activity to give a live view of an org

London AI Governance Startup AI Score Raises 5.4 Million Dollar Seed Round Led by Fuel Ventures to Police Agentic AI Risk

London based AI Score has raised 5.4 million dollars in seed funding to scale a platform that gives organisations visibility and control over how generative and agentic AI is actually used across their operations, a founder access story that sits squarely in the UK's crowded but under capitalised en

Shawn Jhanji

3 days ago2 min read

More on the theme of founders building outside London, with a message this week, from the Treasury which was explicit: growth capital is being redirected toward the regions, not just topped up in the capital. UK venture funding has long been concentrated disproportionately in London and the South East, a pattern that shows up consistently in British Business Bank and Beauhurst data year after year, and that leaves high-growth companies in the North of England competing for scale-up capital against a much thinner set of local options than their London peers. It is the kind of structural gap that rarely makes a single dramatic headline, but quietly shapes which founders get the chance to grow their business into a national or global one. In his first major speech as Chancellor, delivered on 6 and 7 September 2026, John Healey set out to change that arithmetic directly. The centrepiece was a new British Business Bank fund of up to £150m dedicated to high-growth businesses across the

Chancellor Healey Commits £150m British Business Bank Fund to Scale Up Northern England's High Growth Firms

For founders building outside London, the message from the Treasury this week was explicit: growth capital is being redirected toward the regions, not just topped up in the capital.

Shawn Jhanji

4 days ago3 min read

A 500,000 pound pilot fund in South Yorkshire is trying to answer a question that most impact investors gesture at but rarely test with real capital: what type of finance actually suits what type of organisation, and can that matching be done well enough to build something much bigger. The Dream Big South Yorkshire Fund launched in June 2026 to back organisations tackling child poverty in the region. Its structure is deliberately blended. The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority put in 125,000 pounds of grant funding, Save the Children raised a further 125,000 pounds from philanthropic partners, and Key Fund provided 250,000 pounds of social investment. The fund follows the Child Lens Investment Framework, developed globally by Save the Children Global Ventures to target investment that directly benefits underserved children and families. The structural problem the pilot is designed to solve is a familiar one in the social economy. Organisations tackling child poverty range

South Yorkshire Pilots £500k 'Child Lens' Investing Fund and Targets a £20M Successor.

A 500,000 pound pilot fund in South Yorkshire is trying to answer a question that most impact investors gesture at but rarely test with real capital: what type of finance actually suits what type of organisation, and can that matching be done well enough to build something much bigger.

Shawn Jhanji

4 days ago3 min read

Law & regulation

A year after PISCES launched and months after Tokenising Startups first mapped the reconciliation between tokenised shares and Companies House, this is a practical stocktake of what a founder or SEIS investor can actually use today, as distinct from what is still a pilot, a plan, or an open regulatory question. This is general information about an emerging and still developing market, not tax or investment advice. Anyone considering a SEIS investment or a tokenised shareholding should take independent advice specific to their circumstances, and should treat anything marked below as unresolved as genuinely unresolved until HMRC or the FCA rule on it directly. What we believe is 'The settled position' The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme offers up to fifty per cent income tax relief on investments into the very earliest UK companies, those under three years old, with fewer than twenty five employees and gross assets under 350,000 pounds. A company can raise up to 250,000 pounds

What SEIS Investors and Founders Can Actually Do With a Tokenised Shareholding Today

Standfirst: A year after PISCES launched and weeks after Tokenising Startups first mapped the reconciliation between tokenised shares and Companies House, this is a practical stocktake of what a founder or SEIS investor can actually use today, as distinct from what is still a pilot, a plan, or an op

Shawn Jhanji

14 hours ago5 min read

Whoever ends up writing the rulebook for tokenised markets will decide who gets easy access to them first, and a growing chorus of City figures is warning that the UK's window to write that rulebook itself is closing fast. In a City AM op-ed published on 8 September 2026, City grandee Bob Wigley argued that the UK has entered what he calls a new phase of capital markets tokenisation, and now faces a genuine fork in the road: shape the rules, or spend the next decade adapting to rules written somewhere else. The immediate competitive pressure is coming from the United States, where executive orders, an avowedly inclusive posture from regulators and the enactment of the GENIUS Act have combined to give US institutions a head start on legal and operational clarity. The UK is not standing still. Wigley points to a run of recent moves: fresh guidance on tokenised funds and tokenised collateral, the Chancellor's plan for a Digital Gilt Issuance in 2027, and the Bank of England's new se

Bob Wigley Warns the UK Risks Losing Control of Tokenisation Rules to the US Unless It Moves Faster

Whoever ends up writing the rulebook for tokenised markets will decide who gets easy access to them first, and a growing chorus of City figures is warning that the UK's window to write that rulebook itself is closing fast.

Shawn Jhanji

3 days ago4 min read

For UK platforms and law firms watching where the next wave of regulated tokenisation infrastructure lands, Dubai just moved a step closer to the front of the queue. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and Securitize, the BlackRock backed tokenisation platform, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 3 September 2026 to advance tokenisation and digital asset infrastructure across the United Arab Emirates and Dubai specifically. The agreement establishes a collaborative framework rather than committing either party to a specific technology stack or product. A VARA spokesperson said that the intention is to combine the regulator's supervisory perspective with Securitize's experience in institutional tokenisation to identify where collaboration can support the development of trusted, regulated tokenised markets in the emirate. No specific projects have been announced under the MoU at this stage. Carlos Domingo, co founder and chief executive of Securitize, describe

Securitize Signs Memorandum of Understanding With Dubai's VARA to Advance Regulated Tokenisation

For UK platforms and law firms watching where the next wave of regulated tokenisation infrastructure lands, Dubai just moved a step closer to the front of the queue. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and Securitize, the BlackRock backed tokenisation platform, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 3 September 2026 to advance tokenisation and digital asset infrastructure across the United Arab Emirates and Dubai specifically. The agreement establishes a

Shawn Jhanji

Sep 42 min read

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THE LEGAL VIEW

As the equities markets are generally moving towards tokenisation, a common question is how the marketing of tokenised equity differs from traditional equity. In this respect, it is a mistake to focus on the “tokenised” element of tokenised equity. In the UK, tokenisation does not, from a purely legal analysis, expand the target market to whom shares can be sold. Where a token represents rights to, or interests in, an underlying share, it is very likely going to be treated as a security under UK law. This means the same regulatory framework that applies to traditional securities also governs the categories of investors to whom tokenised equity may be offered or sold. In this respect, the rules that govern marketing into the UK are deliberately broad in scope and can apply even where the issuer is based overseas, provided the relevant communications are capable of having an effect in the UK. As such, before marketing or selling tokenised equity to UK investors, firms should carefu

Borderless Assets, Not Borderless Investors: Who Can Invest in Tokenised Equity?

As the equities markets are generally moving towards tokenisation, a common question is how the marketing of tokenised equity differs from traditional equity. In this respect, it is a mistake to focus on the “tokenised” element of tokenised equity. In the UK, tokenisation does not, from a purely legal analysis, expand the target market to whom shares can be sold. Where a token represents rights to, or interests in, an underlying share, it is very likely going to be treated as

Jul 275 min read

Going down the rabbit hole: an introduction to tokenised equity

For founders and investors. If you are a founder weighing up whether to tokenise your equity, or an investor trying to work out what you would actually be buying, this is the place to start. From a legal perspective, it covers: how tokenised equity works, what changes, what does not, and where the rules are heading. Tokenisation is a concept often met with much hype and little knowledge. At its core it is simple. A cryptoasset token is just shorthand for data held on-chai

Jun 304 min read

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Securitize's CEO Says Public Companies Have Lost Track of Their Own Shareholders. His Fix Is an Onchain Register

For UK founders and investors watching whether tokenisation infrastructure gets built from scratch or bolted onto rails the world already trusts, this week's answer came from two of the biggest names in global banking. Standard Chartered and HSBC have completed the first live cross border transaction on Swift's blockchain based ledger, using it to exchange and settle tokenised deposit obligations between the two banks. The transaction worked across three layers. HSBC and Standard Chartered exchanged payment messages through Swift's ledger. The resulting obligations were recorded on HSBC's Tokenised Deposit Service and on Standard Chartered's own tokenised deposit infrastructure. Swift's ledger then matched and netted those obligations before final settlement occurred through existing payment systems, rather than through a new settlement network built from the ground up. The significance is not the technology on its own. Tokenised deposits already exist at several global banks, in

Standard Chartered and HSBC Complete First Live Tokenised Deposit Transaction on Swift's Blockchain Ledger

For UK founders and investors watching whether tokenisation infrastructure gets built from scratch or bolted onto rails the world already trusts, this week's answer came from two of the biggest names in global banking. Standard Chartered and HSBC have completed the first live cross border transactio

If you are wondering which model wins the tokenisation infrastructure race, this week's confirmation from one of the world's largest custodian banks is a bigger signal than another platform launch. Citi Investor Services confirmed on 18 August that it will launch digital asset custody later this year, starting with bitcoin, as part of a new platform called Custody+. Custody+ brings together real time asset servicing, instant settlement, on demand FX, real time cash and liquidity management, digital asset custody and white label infrastructure that other institutions can plug into. Citi's Single Event Processing technology already processes more than 80 per cent of the bank's total asset servicing event volume in real time in the US, according to the bank. Starting with bitcoin lets Citi enter through the largest and most liquid digital asset market, aimed at institutional investors who already hold or are preparing to gain exposure. But the more consequential piece sits alongside

Citi Confirms Bitcoin Custody Launch Under New Custody+ Platform

For UK founders and investors watching which model wins the tokenisation infrastructure race, this week's confirmation from one of the world's largest custodian banks is a bigger signal than another platform launch.

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Ctrl Alt Completes a Four Jurisdiction Licence Set for Tokenisation With Guernsey Authorisation

Securitize Signs Memorandum of Understanding With Dubai's VARA to Advance Regulated Tokenisation

Securitize and Socios.com Partner to Bring Regulated Tokenised Equity to Professional Sports Team Ownership

Securitize and Socios.com, the fan engagement platform owned by Chiliz Group, announced a partnership on 2 September to develop regulated tokenised equity offerings representing minority stakes in professional sports teams, under the new Socios Equity Token category that Chiliz unveiled in late Augu

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