Cantor Equity Partners II (CEPT), the special purpose vehicle that plans to take tokenization company Securitize public early this year, saw its stock price rise on Thursday after Citron Research backed the company and criticized Coinbase (COIN) for withdrawing its support for the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act.
“Coinbase wants the benefits of CLARITY without creating competition,” wrote Citron, led by Andrew Left. “[Coinbase]is not opposing this bill because it is bad for crypto, but because a cleaner version might be better for Securitize than it is for them.”
Citron argued that Securitize, which has issued more than $4 billion in tokenized assets and holds the necessary licenses to offer tokenized securities, stands to benefit if clearer rules are passed. In contrast, Coinbase will face direct competition.
Citron saw this moment as a power struggle between Coinbase and Wall Street’s upstarts. “Armstrong vs. BlackRock and Trump,” the post said, pointing to Securitize’s strong backers, including BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers. Interestingly, Coinbase Ventures, the venture arm of Coinbase, was also one of Securitize’s early investors, participating in the startup’s 2018 funding round at the time.
Coinbase later on Wednesday withdrew its support for the bill, citing, among other things, that it would “effectively ban” tokenized stocks. The Senate Banking Committee subsequently halted a planned increase in the price of the virtual currency market structure on Thursday.
CEPT stock rose as much as 10% on Citron’s support, but has since returned to a 2.2% gain. Meanwhile, Coinbase stock fell nearly 4% on Thursday.
Read more: Tokenization company Securitize aims to go public through SPAC deal valued at $1.25 billion
