Apex Group, a financial services provider with more than $3 trillion in assets under administration, said on Tuesday it had acquired a majority stake in Tokeny, a Luxembourg-based firm that helps institutions tokenize real-world assets (RWA) on public blockchains.

According to the deal, Apex expects to take full ownership of Tokeny over the next three years, after first investing in the company in late 2023, Apex said in a press release. The companies did not disclose the terms of the acquisition in the press release, and a spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

The acquisition comes as more traditional financial firms are looking at tokenization as the next frontier in capital markets, using blockchain technology for moving assets like bonds, funds and other securities.

For institutional investors, the process promises simpler cross-border transactions, faster settlement and new liquidity channels. Tokenized assets could be a $18 trillion market by 2033, a report from BCG and Ripple last month projected.

«Tokenization is a foundational shift in how assets will be managed, distributed, and accessed,» Apex founder and CEO Peter Hughes said in a statement. «Our strengthened partnership with Tokeny is key to delivering on our vision to be the infrastructure provider in the digital era of finance.»

Tokeny’s infrastructure has already been used to tokenize over $32 billion in assets, supporting the full life cycle of tokenized securities — from issuance to transfer to compliance — and is best known for establishing ERC-3643, a widely used standard for compliant digital asset transfers, the press release said.

Apex said Tokeny’s team and tools will be brought in-house, and it aims to offer clients a turnkey infrastructure for blockchain-based finance, layering smart contracts and decentralized protocols on top of its traditional services.

Read more: Ripple, BCG Project $18.9T Tokenized Asset Market by 2033

«Sell in May and go away,» goes the Wall Street adage for equity markets every summer. For bitcoin BTC, though, some analysts say this season could mark a break from tradition.

«As we get into the European summer months, the sense is it’s more likely a case of ‘buy in May and go away’ than any significant headwinds or selling pressure,» said Paul Howard, director at crypto trading firm Wincent in a market note.

A confluence of positive regulatory developments around digital assets in the U.S. and increasing institutional buying both via exchange-traded funds and spot allocation is poised to push BTC higher in the next months, Howard said.

U.S.-traded spot bitcoin ETFs, for example, pulled in $667 million in net inflows on Monday with BTC pausing just below its January record, underscoring persistent demand, he noted. The vehicles attracted $3.3 billion in May, per SoSoValue. On top of that, there’s been a flurry of companies joining Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) adding bitcoin to their treasury, financed by debt and stock issuances.

«As we edge closer to a $4 trillion market cap for digital assets, we will see BTC cross all-time-highs in the coming weeks,» Howard said. The total crypto market cap currently stands at around $3.3 trillion, per TradingView data.

Historically, summer months have been slow for crypto assets, but macro and political forces are also converging in ways that could disrupt the typical seasonal lull, analysts at crypto analytics firm Kaiko pointed out.

The Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision in June will precede Donald Trump’s July 9 tariff deadline for trade partners, both of which could trigger market-wide volatility, the report said.

Bitcoin options markets are already flashing signs of investor anticipation, Kaiko analysts said. Strike prices at $110,000 and $120,000 for the June 27 expiry have drawn heavy volume, suggesting bets on BTC making a record-breaking move, the report noted.

Bitcoin briefly topped $107,000 during the Tuesday session, gaining 1.2% over the past 24 hours and trading just 2% below its January record high.

A tokenized version of a major private credit fund managed by Apollo will arrive on Solana’s SOL decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, bringing traditional financial instruments closer to the fast-growing network.

The launch, orchestrated by lending platform Kamino Finance with support from tokenization specialist Securitize and DeFi risk advisor Steakhouse Financial, aims to make the Apollo’s Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED) token the first of its kind to be available for on-chain borrowing and leverage on Solana. The token’s debut is pending on completing an audit, Kamino said.

The ACRED token, launched in January, offers exposure to Apollo’s private credit strategies and is issued under Securitize’s regulated token framework. ACRED will also be the first token on Solana using Securitize’s sToken standard, with more assets expected to follow later, Securitize said.

The product underscores a growing appetite in crypto for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. RWAs—traditional instruments such as funds, bonds or real estate—are being brought onto blockchain rails to reduce friction in investing, improve access and transparency, and allow for programmable use in DeFi protocols. In practice, this means investors can use RWAs as collateral to borrow against, yield farming, or plug into automated investment strategies.

«The value of tokenization really comes into play when these assets are integrated into DeFi, and new products and strategies are developed around them,» says Reid Simon, head of DeFi and credit solutions at Securitize.

Despite Solana’s fast-growing DeFi market, RWAs are yet to take off on the chain. According to RWA.xyz, Solana hosts $330 million worth of RWAs, small compared to the network’s nearly $9 billion DeFi market size. It’s also trailing rival layer-1 network Ethereum’s $7 billion real-world asset market. But with large players in tokenization stepping in, backers of the launch see this as a tipping point.

«Solana has experienced explosive consumer growth in recent years, but below the surface we are seeing enormous interest from institutions and asset issuers,» said Marius Ciubotariu, co-founder at Kamino, «Finally, the industry is in a position to not only bring these assets on-chain, but to provide genuine use-cases.»

Through Kamino’s Multiply product, users will be able to leverage ACRED for yield strategies—automatically looping the asset to increase exposure while managing collateral and borrow levels through Solana-native smart contracts. That’s a similar offering to what Gauntlet introduced on Polygon in late April.

«Building on off-chain credit assets in a composable way is the sort of long-term investment we believe can help catalyze further growth of DeFi in Solana,» said adcv, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial.