Ami Ben-David, Managing Partner at SPiCE VC: Why Ami Believes Long the Bankers

— Ami Ben-David built six companies pre-crypto, including a distributed search engine for Firefox OS, before founding SPiCE VC in 2017 to launch the first tokenized venture fund.

— Security tokens remain early-stage infrastructure: issuance platforms rate an A, protocols a C, exchanges initial with low volume, and service providers a C as the ecosystem matures.

— Onera is a new blockchain built on Hyperledger Fabric specifically for institutional security tokens, introducing "Know Your Asset" (KYA) to embed asset documentation immutably within tokens and underwriting nodes to verify assets before issuance.

— Ben-David argues bankers will remain essential to tokenized securities because institutional capital requires trusted intermediaries to underwrite large, non-commoditized assets like major real estate or infrastructure deals.

— Privacy and anonymity are distinct concepts; Ben-David opposes anonymity for reducing accountability and enabling fraud, while Pomp argues privacy is a fundamental right independent of whether one is anonymous or pseudonymous.

— Tokenization will eventually reach trillions of dollars by digitizing illiquid assets, but institutional adoption requires solving infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and reputation staking by established financial entities.

— Institutional investors will likely enter tokenized securities through established investment banks and regulated entities acting as underwriting nodes, not direct blockchain interaction, meaning traditional finance infrastructure remains a bottleneck and opportunity.

— The largest opportunities in tokenization exist in illiquid, non-commoditized assets (real estate, infrastructure, funds) where traditional finance has no secondary market; commoditized assets will be automated by AI and algorithms instead.

— Verify the underlying documentation and rights of any digital security by examining whether asset identity and legal claims are embedded on-chain; if rights are stored off-chain, the token lacks the transparency needed for institutional trust.