Public acquires fractional investing firm Otis for NFTs and other collectibles

New York-based investing firm Public announced Wednesday that it announced Otis, a fractional investing company that focuses on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), art and other collectible items. 

“With Otis joining Public, the Public platform will soon be the only place in the world where people can invest in — and build a modern portfolio with — any fractional asset,” Leif Abraham, Public.com's co-CEO, wrote in a blog post. Public began supporting crypto investments in October 2021, including bitcoin, ether and dogecoin, among others. 

THE SCOOP

Keep up with the latest news, trends, charts and views on crypto and DeFi with a new biweekly newsletter from The Block's Frank Chaparro

By signing-up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
By signing-up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Fractionalization works by breaking down an asset, such as a rare CryptoPunk, into smaller tokens that a user can then purchase. If the asset in its entirety grows in value, the fractionalized token of that asset becomes more profitable as well. 

Some pop culture artifacts have already been fractionalized, such as the original “Doge” meme, worth about $4 million, getting fractionalized into 16,969,696,969 $DOG tokens in August of 2021.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.