The Vertalo story · March 2018
In March 2018, from a small team in Austin, Vertalo issued one of the first compliant issuances of tokenized real-world equity — inside US securities law rather than around it. The contract that recorded it is still live on Ethereum today.
How SeriesX became Vertalo
The company began as SeriesX, built around a simple frustration: the records people rely on most are almost never trustworthy. Resumes are self-reported, cap tables live in spreadsheets, and the relationships that matter inside a company are scattered across email threads that no one can find.
We built Census and Stints to certify working relationships on a blockchain — so proof lived somewhere permanent and neutral. We were accepted into Capital Factory, launched the beta, and somewhere in the middle of that work we noticed the thing that changed the company forever.
The registry we built to prove people was the exact infrastructure that securities issuers are legally required to maintain, and almost never have the right tools for.
August 2017
Everyone around us was rushing toward the SAFT. We made a deliberate choice: build a genuine Reg D security token instead — treating the token as the security it actually was, with every obligation attached.
It was unglamorous and unfashionable in 2017. It is obvious in 2026.
The offering
VEST represented equity in Vertalo — a real ownership interest ranking alongside the company's existing common equity — offered to accredited investors under Rule 506(c) of Regulation D and to qualified investors abroad under Regulation S.
We worked with serious counsel, built compliance into the issuance, and shipped actual equity to real wallets on a public chain. Vertalo conducted one of the very first compliant onchain issuances of tokenized real-world equity ever completed.
Why Vertalo exists
In 2018 the market rushed capital toward the moment of issuance and the dream of trading — and almost no one was building the connective tissue in between. We had a name for that empty space: the compliance gap.
Capital in, tokens out, work stopping the moment issuance closed.
The decade after issuance — legally required, rarely built for.
An arms race for venues, nothing connecting issuance to trading.
From one issuance to the infrastructure beneath issuance
A bet that the records people depend on most can be made trustworthy and permanent.
Working relationships certified on-chain by both parties. The registry insight surfaces.
A deliberate choice to build a genuine Reg D security token — the compliant path.
One of the first compliant issuances of tokenized real-world equity ever completed. The contract still confirms today.
Pointed at the compliance gap for every other issuer. More than a hundred issuers follow.
CIK 0001793379. The posture we chose in 2017 becomes a formal credential.
The unfashionable posture we chose in 2018 is the one the market moved toward. We were eight years early.
Why we still tell this story
We started by trying to make a single kind of record trustworthy. That led us to issue our own equity on-chain when almost no one dared to do it inside the rules. The chain has kept one receipt the whole time, and the regulator holds the other.
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