Seven distinctions people get wrong, and what each one actually decides.

Three acronyms, opposite substance

STO, ICO and IEO

Same family, different centuries

Tokenization, securitization and cryptocurrency

The United States, four doors

Reg D, Reg S, Reg CF and Reg A+

Against the round you already know

Tokenizing and a traditional private raise

Against going public

Tokenizing and an initial public offering

Two standards, one direction

ERC-3643 and ERC-7943

Side by side

Seven comparisons, in full.

Read the row labels down the left. Every comparison ends with the line that settles it, including the ones where the answer is that you should do the other thing.

The one that decides everything else

A security token and a utility token

They look identical on a block explorer and answer to completely different law. Treating one as the other is the most expensive mistake an issuer can make.

	Security token	Utility token
What it is	A regulated financial instrument: equity, debt, a fund interest or a share of revenue.	Access to a product or a network. A consumer good, not a claim on a business.
What it owes you	A defined claim: profit, repayment, or a vote, written into documents.	Whatever the product does. No claim on anyone’s profits.
Who may hold it	Only holders the rules admit, checked on every transfer.	Usually anyone, which is exactly why it cannot carry a claim.
Which law applies	Securities law, in full, in every country you sell into.	Consumer and commercial law, and sometimes securities law anyway.
If you get it wrong	You were selling securities without meaning to, which is enforcement.	You built a claim into a product token, which is the same problem.

The test is not what you call it. It is what a holder is entitled to, and who decided that.

Three acronyms, opposite substance

STO, ICO and IEO

One of these sells enforceable rights under securities law. The other two sold tokens and hope, which is why one of them survived.

	STO	ICO	IEO
What is sold	A real security, as a compliance-gated token.	A new coin with no claim attached to it.	The same thing as an ICO, wrapped in an exchange’s vetting.
Who may buy	Verified investors the exemption admits.	Anyone with a wallet.	Anyone the exchange onboards.
What sits behind it	Offering documents, an issuer, and a legal opinion.	A white paper.	A white paper and a listing agreement.
Where it stands in 2026	The compliant version of raising against a real business.	The era ended in enforcement.	Largely gone with it.

3,376

initial coin offerings recorded as ended

recorded as ongoing

recorded as upcoming

CoinGecko’s own count of the offerings it tracked, read 12 September 2026. Nobody publishes an equivalent count of security token offerings, so the other half of this comparison has no number and we are not going to invent one. Source: CoinGecko.

If you are raising against a real business or asset, it is a security everywhere that matters. The STO is not one of three options; it is the lawful version of what you are already doing.

Same family, different centuries

Tokenization, securitization and cryptocurrency

These get conflated constantly, and the difference is not technical. It is what the thing points at.

	Tokenization	Securitization	Cryptocurrency
What the instrument points at	A specific, legally defined claim on a specific real asset.	A pool of assets, packaged into tradable instruments.	Itself. Bitcoin represents nothing else.
What is new about it	The ledger and the rules that travel with the instrument.	Nothing. It is decades old and works.	The asset class itself.
Who administers it	The contract, against a register that is the asset.	Layers of intermediaries reconciling records.	The network.
What it replaces	The plumbing, not the legal substance.	Nothing here; tokenization can carry it.	Not comparable. It is a different question.

21,085

coins in existence, each representing itself

176

tokenized real-world asset products on chain

$27.8B

of real assets behind those products

Coin count from CoinGecko, asset figures from DefiLlama, both read 12 September 2026. The point is not that one number is bigger. It is that they count completely different objects.

Tokenization is, in one sense, securitization with a better ledger. It does not replace the legal substance of a security. It replaces the paperwork around it.

The United States, four doors

Reg D, Reg S, Reg CF and Reg A+

Which one you use decides who may invest, whether you may advertise, and how much filing you are signing up for. Your counsel picks it. This is the shape of the choice.

	Reg D	Reg S	Reg CF	Reg A+
Who may invest	Mostly accredited investors.	Investors outside the United States.	The general public, accredited or not.	The general public.
May you advertise	Under 506(c), yes, if every investor is verified.	Outside the United States, within local rules.	Yes, within the rules of the portal.	Yes.
How much is filed	A short notice filing.	No United States registration.	A form, plus ongoing reporting.	A qualification with the SEC, plus ongoing reporting.
What it costs you	Least paperwork, narrowest audience.	Runs alongside a domestic offering as a tranche.	More process, a wider audience, an annual cap.	Most process, the widest audience, the highest ceiling.

$311.2B

of stablecoins in circulation

$183.5B

in Tether alone

425

stablecoins tracked

Whatever exemption you sell under, the money still has to settle in something. Source: DefiLlama, read 12 September 2026.

There are annual caps on two of these and they change, so no figure is printed here. Your counsel confirms the current one before you rely on it.

Against the round you already know

Tokenizing and a traditional private raise

The comparison people expect is speed. The real difference is what you are left holding afterwards.

	A traditional private raise	The same raise, tokenized
The register afterwards	A spreadsheet somebody maintains, drifting from the documents.	The asset itself, correct at the moment of every transfer.
Paying investors	A report, a bank run, a reconciliation.	From the register, on the date, recorded as it happens.
An investor selling later	A lawyer, a consent, a new agreement.	A transfer inside the rules the asset already carries.
The next round	A new data room, assembled again.	The same record, read again.
What is identical	Securities law, your counsel, a licensed firm for the sale.	All three. None of that changes.

Tokenizing does not make a raise easier to close. It makes the years after it cheaper to run.

Against going public

Tokenizing and an initial public offering

These are not alternatives for the same company. They are answers to different sizes of question.

	An IPO	A tokenized offering
What it takes	Years, an underwriter, audited history, and continuous reporting.	Months, counsel, and a record that survives diligence.
Who can realistically do it	Companies large enough to carry the cost of being public.	Private companies and single assets, including small ones.
Who may buy	The public, on an exchange.	The investors your exemption admits.
Liquidity afterwards	A listed market, with real depth.	A path to secondary trading through licensed venues, if a venue lists it.

If an IPO is genuinely available to you and you want to be a public company, take the IPO. This is for the far larger number of companies for which it is not.

Two standards, one direction

ERC-3643 and ERC-7943

Both add identity and eligibility rules to a token so it can only move to a holder the rules admit. The difference is how much they assume about the rest of your stack.

	ERC-3643	ERC-7943
What it does	Adds transfer checks tied to an on-chain identity framework.	Adds transfer checks, eligibility, freezing and enforcement.
What it assumes	An identity system built the way the standard expects.	Less. It leaves the identity provider and the jurisdiction to you.
Where it came from	The earlier of the two, and widely deployed.	The more recent, aimed at real-world assets specifically.
Where we stand	Interoperable, and a fine choice for many issuers.	The one we issue on. Stobox is a backer of it.

Both are open standards, which is the point. An issuer on either can leave its vendor without leaving its register behind.

Comparing platforms, including us

Five questions, none of which show up in a demo.

Score any provider on the five below, including us. Then read the named comparisons underneath, which answer them for five specific platforms.

01
How long they have done this, and for whom
Through how many market conditions, how many real clients, how many countries. A platform that launched last cycle has no scar tissue, and this work is mostly scar tissue.
02
Whether they do the readiness, or only the rails
Most vendors sell the last mile and assume somebody else handled the first ninety per cent. Usually nobody did, which is why the project stalls.
03
Open standards, or a format only they can read
A standard is what lets you leave. A proprietary format is a reason you cannot.
04
Compliance that is native, not bolted on
Transfer restrictions, eligibility across countries and enforcement should be properties of the asset. A credible provider works with licensed firms rather than implying securities law does not apply to them.
05
What they charge, and on what basis
A share of your raise is broker-dealer work and carries its own regulatory weight. Flat fees for software are the cleaner model, and they can be published, which ours are.

How the named comparisons are written. A page that says what another company charges, or supports, or does not support, is a claim about somebody else’s product, so each one carries the date it was checked and a link to where that company says it. Where a competitor is better, the page says so in their column. Where nobody has published an answer, the page says that instead of guessing: “they do not publish it” is a fact, “they do not do it” usually is not. Prices and product claims move, so read the source before you rely on a figure, and tell us when one of these goes out of date.

The pairs people actually confuse

Routes and instruments, side by side.

Six pages on the choices that get mixed up: which exemption, which instrument, which route to market. Each one is about the things themselves, not about a named vendor.

Stobox vs Brickken

The closest comparison on this list. Both serve private companies, both issue permissioned tokens, and both back the same open standard, which…

Stobox vs DigiShares

Both have served private companies since 2018 and both route regulated sales through some of the same partners. The split is what you are buying: a…

Stobox vs Polymesh

One is a blockchain, the other is a platform, so this is really a choice between two places to put the compliance: in the chain, or in the token.…

Stobox vs Securitize

These two do genuinely different jobs. Securitize is the regulated infrastructure under the largest tokenized funds in the market. Stobox takes a…

Stobox vs Tokeny

Two non-custodial technology providers, two permissioned-token lineages, and completely different customers. Tokeny is infrastructure institutions…

ERC-3643 vs ERC-7943

Both make a security token enforce its own compliance – only verified, eligible wallets can hold or move it. The difference is philosophy: a complete…

Reg D vs Reg S vs Reg CF vs Reg A+

The exemption you raise under decides who can invest, how you can market, how much you can raise, and what you must disclose. Here are the main US…

STO vs ICO vs IEO

Three acronyms, one blockchain, opposite legal substance. One of them sells enforceable rights under securities law; the other two sell tokens and…

Security token vs utility token

They look similar on-chain and are constantly confused – but they answer to different laws. Here is the distinction that decides who can hold a…

Tokenization vs IPO

The board-level question, answered without the hype: what each route costs, who it lets in, how long it takes, what you give up – and the honest…

Tokenization vs traditional fundraising

Tokenizing a raise changes the plumbing – records, settlement, compliance, and transfer – without changing the law it answers to. Here is what moves…