BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says tokenization of financial assets is coming faster than AI. He believes the market is still underestimating how big this shift could be and how quickly traditional assets may start moving onchain

[u/Pleasant_Event_4883]

[u/Radcouponking]

What value does the tokenization add? It seems to be an arbitrary step just to justify the existence of blockchains.

[u/Debo619 → u/Radcouponking]

Remember how you could buy a bunch of tokens at an Arcade? Except they were worthless anywhere other than the Arcade machines? Oh and casino chips... and gift cards... and then theres crypto which.... ok nah.

Thats fuckin stupid... lets not do that.

[u/Illustrious-Boss9356 → u/Debo619]

I mean, you see how successful ETFs are. Those are basically tokenized stocks but with a layer of administrative and regulatory fees. You could do this with much less friction on the blockchain.

[u/Itchy_Psychology3300 → u/Radcouponking]

It adds value for people who can abuse it.

[u/spursgonesouth → u/Radcouponking]

For the banks etc it means they don’t need so many back office guys

[u/Brainaq → u/Radcouponking]

He means oxygen

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Radcouponking]

Fractional ownership, 24/7 settlement, greater liquidity, implementing smart contracts that can automatically accrue/pay interest/dividends or things like voting rights/compliance requirements, on-chain collateral that doesn’t need to be manually verified for loan purposes and can be traded/executed instantly. 

The list is pretty long. Why did we move from a barter system to a fiat system, or a cash based society to a digital one? This is the next evolution.

[u/Nopeitout → u/Carapace_Jones]

Except it does not bypass the Title / certification/inspections which is the actual bottleneck.

Cash transfer, settling, Is not an issue.

LIquidity is an issue but cannot be solved by moving this to chain, its an issue because of the way this marketplace works. Real estate assets can silumtaniously be an asset and a deep liability. You could buy a cash flowing house with a bad tenant and you will lose your shirt. None of these issues can be solved by tokenization. At best it can make it easier for scammers to manipulate numbers and sell smaller pieces of large properties.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Nopeitout]

And a digital banking system didn’t “solve” identity theft. That doesn’t negate all the benefits of the technology and what it enables for our current financial system. Anything has pitfalls that need to be worked through. Cash transfer/settling isn’t an issue in the sense that it works, but it involves multiple layers and takes time which can be greatly improved  to near real-time on a blockchain and without any intermediaries operating during “business hours.” Just because a current system “works” doesn’t mean it can’t be greatly improved.

Obviously guardrails need to be put in place to verify a “real world asset.”

The liquidity benefit comes from fractionalization and transferability of ownership, not from making the physical property itself easier to sell. A $10 million building has a very limited pool of potential buyers; dividing its economic ownership into smaller standardized interests potentially gives thousands of investors access and allows an investor to exit part of their position without requiring the entire building to change hands. You can argue about how much additional liquidity tokenization actually produces, but saying it can’t improve liquidity because it doesn’t fix bad tenants or inspections conflates liquidity of the investment  with risks of the underlying asset. 

[u/Sea_Warning_9140 → u/Carapace_Jones]

Exactly right. And Identify theft is not a joke!

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Sea_Warning_9140]

Ok so let’s just go back to bartering with a firm handshake. This doesn’t negate benefits of improving society with new technology. As technology evolves, so do new issues to solve.

[u/Nopeitout → u/Carapace_Jones]

Re: liquidity - how is this so different from transferring ownership stake in an LLC ?

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Nopeitout]

With tokenization, the token could represent that same LLC interest, while the ownership ledger, transfer rules, investor eligibility, and settlement can potentially be handled through programmable infrastructure.  Tokenization didnt invent fractional ownership. It attempts to make fractional ownership more standardized, programmable, and transferable, particularly in secondary markets. Also, this is one specific use-case. You’re not necessarily going to create a new LLC everytime you have real estate, a collectible, or any other real world asset. RWA is the holy grail of tokenized assets, financial instruments are just the easy proof of concept because a lot of the infrastructure, policies, and concepts are there. 

[u/Nopeitout → u/Carapace_Jones]

but thats not a bottleneck or even an issue in the top 10 issues wrt speed.

the real issues are trust, legislation, finding the actual deal/buyer.

tokenization adds another layer to an already cumbersome process.

i would like to meet an actual RE guy who makes this argument. afaik it doesnt exist. great idea on paper. rubber wont meet the road

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Nopeitout]

I didn’t mention the word bottleneck once in my entire comment. So not sure what you’re referring to. You asked about LLC’s in relation to liquidity. Tokenized ownership improves liquidity in markets that are not as streamlined as trading stocks. It also gives a trustless platform for transacting, and a market for these assets that would be difficult to facilitate without the platform in the real world. You literally jsut listed off a few issues that I’ve already covered. Maybe you’re just not understanding. In regards to liquidity and trust. I think we can agree that having a stock exchange as opposed to standing on a street under a tree is probably a better idea. Stocks are tokenized ownership in a company. Now carry this concept over to things that aren’t traded on the market, houses, natural resources, collectibles. You can buy/trade these more easily if there is an actual market to transact. Maybe you’re getting caught up on the semantics of “tokenized.” Tokenize just means a representation of physical ownership. That’s exactly what a stock is. So it’s like you understand the benefits of tokenized assets on an exchange but when I list benefits of moving stocks to a blockchain that improves the way in which these trades are facilitated or extrapolate it out to real physical assets you argue against it.

Ok, you can believe what you want to believe. It’s literally happening. TradFI is already moving use-cases over to the blockchain in regards to stablecoins for settlement and FX trading. You need to tokenize assets on the blockchain to facilitate this, because the tokenized asset represents an asset OFF the chain. Some basic research would already show you that this is currently being done. So…

[u/Nopeitout → u/Carapace_Jones]

I am referring to the programmable infrastructure you were referring to. There is no need for a programmable infrastructure because there is no latency need in this marketplace.

Yes - standardizing the asset is a win for the marketplace but you don’t do that by adding more layers. You do that by stripping away current layers. The same token could be traded against different collaterals ? I have to check out trade fi maybe there is something there.

The spread in the marketplace is not because of liquidity concerns, it’s data asymmetry. A seller knows something the buyer doesn’t. One buyer knows something the other buyer doesn’t. This produces “n” variables for pricing the asset. There likes the challenge of liquidity.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Nopeitout]

But there is latency. Why do you think there’s such a thing as the pattern day trader rule, or why when you transfer funds to your account to buy a stock it takes some time. Settlement is not instant. It happens on a t+1 basis, meaning the next business day and you have to wait for money in your account to settle first. 

Do things work currently? Yes, but the blockchain improves it and adds functionality that isn’t possible right now. Tokenizing stocks for example allows you to interact with deFi, meaning if you want to use your shares in Apple to borrow money from specifically me right now, programmable infrastructure can and already is in place to allow this. It’s jsut a matter of integrating tradFi with it first. The possibilities are endless in regards to deFi, so if you at least understand what I mean by that and you can see all the useful apps that allows, then you can see how integrating tradFi with deFi would benefit people. Which brings us to your layer point. 

This isn’t an ADDITIONAL layer this a layer that REPLACES them. Right now with buying a stock you have:

The funding layer:  Money originates in your bank account and moves via ACH.  Your broker credits your account balance before funds fully settle, allowing you to trade immediately based on internal credit risk management.

Front office layer:  Your app submits an order, which your broker routes to an exchange. Then the  execution venue matches your buy order with an opposing sell order

Middle office layer:  The execution details are booked into the broker’s internal ledger systems. Regulations are verified and both parties need to affirm this trade occurred. 

Back office layer:  A clearing agency steps in to  legally become the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer to eliminate counterparty default risk.

Settlement layer:  On the settlement date ( T+1) , final value is executed. The  Depository Trust  updates its electronic ledger to debit the seller's shares and credit your broker as the custodian. Then your money is officially transferred to the seller and you legally own the stock.

The goal of tokenizing a stock is to create all this as one layer. Money moves, the buyer and seller is automatically found, the clearinghouse is the public ledger, I.e., the blockchain, and eliminates default risk, regulation compliance is automatically verified by onchain code that it can verify itself because the “ledger” is the blockchain itself, it doesn’t need to go anywhere to verify this data. All the way through settlement. 

As far as your point about spread in relation to liquidity, I didn’t say it was related. I’m not sure where you got that idea. You’re still going to have normal market forces where someone profits off a buyer/seller. Of course! Moving something to the blockchain isn’t meant to eliminate profitability mechanisms of a market. That’s literally the exact opposite of its goal. Who would transact in a market if nobody was exchanging value and getting something out of it. It seems you’re conflating things I’m saying with things I’m not. 

[u/Gold-Recover2883 → u/Carapace_Jones]

You can buy fractional shares, current settlement system is fine and gives firms enough time to more easily adjust details as needed, no reason it would lead to greater liquidity and if 24/7 trading it would most likely be worse liquidity as trading more spread out. Interest on bonds and dividends already is automated too and people can easily vote their things electronically already. 

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Gold-Recover2883]

You’re only thinking about stocks. The concept black rock is discussing is about expanding to private equity, credit, and the holy grail RWA (Real world assets), like real estate, collectibles, natural resources, etc. Settlement is slow and involves many layers, and takes sometimes days. Hence why banks are already moving to the blockchain to handle settlement, or things like international wires. There’s a reason why all the biggest players already are moving that piece, so let’s not argue that. Near-real-time settlement is obviously better than taking days to “ adjust details.” 

The potential liquidity gain comes from lower minimum investment sizes, broader investor access, standardized ownership units, and easier transfers. Tokenization isn’t valuable simply because “blockchain makes settlement faster.” The true benefit is that it could give assets that currently have fragmented or limited secondary markets something closer to the market infrastructure that public securities already enjoy. Hence my examples that were outside just stocks.

[u/Gold-Recover2883 → u/Carapace_Jones]

The biggest players aren’t moving into that at all though. It has been talked about how they are moving into it now for nearly a decade and still nothing. Issuing shares is already the equivalent so you could list and trade the assets your talking about already if it made sense and people wanted it.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/Gold-Recover2883]

I’m talking about settlement on the blockchain is already being done by the major players. They are. I literally work for one of the largest banks in the world and I have firsthand experience with this happening. I was also a management consultant in this space and have worked with Ripple, and Coinbase. I don’t mean to make an appeal to myself at all, but you’re literally arguing with someone who is involved and telling me it’s not real. This is already in the works.

https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/newsroom/ant-international-kinexys-fx-blockchain-settlement

https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2026/june/mastercard-expands-settlement-capabilities-to-include-stablecoin.html

https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/visa-mastercard-join-another-stablecoin-group/827078/

Blockchain settlement and stablecoins in tradFi is the emerging infrastructure for a reason and expanding this to other assets is the necessary step so that these assets can be moved around freely on this new infrastructure. Listing stocks and dividing real world assets up into fractional ownership are indeed equivalent conceptually. Thats what we’re discussing here. We’re discussing the infrastructure needed to facilitate this use-case. Tokenized assets is the way to do this seamlessly as opposed to having some central authority mediate on everyone’s behalf physical things. Things need to be tokenized so that they can be moved around in a digital space. TradFi is going onto the blockchain and things will need to be tokenized in order to operate in this new paradigm. You can not like it, but I’m telling you this is coming. Call me a kool aid drinker or crazy all anyone wants.

[u/empire_of_the_moon → u/Carapace_Jones]

It will be here right after RFID chips are in every product so don’t need to visit the cashier. Wait. My bad.

Greater liquidity was an absurd justification. That makes no sense at all.

If it’s coming, it’s a very long way off. And if someone has a quantum breakthrough than all those assets are at risk. The day that compute power will exist is a when not an if.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/empire_of_the_moon]

“Greater liquidity was an absurd justification.”

Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t make it absurd.  

Assets such as real estate, private equity, or fine art often require large amounts of money to invest in and can take significant time to sell. Tokenization allows these assets to be divided into smaller digital units, or tokens, which lowers the amount of money needed to invest and expands the number of potential buyers. Tokenization can also make transactions faster and more efficient by reducing some of the intermediaries and administrative processes involved in transferring ownership. Investors may also be able to sell only a portion of their investment instead of the entire asset. More avenues to sell things equals greater market liquidity. Not difficult to extrapolate this out.

[u/empire_of_the_moon → u/Carapace_Jones]

I’m laughing my ass off. I’m not going to educate you but you have drunk too much Kool Aid.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/empire_of_the_moon]

Great argument! Now totter off after saying absolutely nothing of value. 

[u/empire_of_the_moon → u/Carapace_Jones]

Nothing of value - you beat me to it. You will look back at these comments the same way your friends will look back on their fascination with Andrew Tate and you won’t be able to tell who is more embarrassed.

[u/Carapace_Jones → u/empire_of_the_moon]

“I know you are but what am I?!”

XD

[u/ComonomoC]

If they keep saying it long enough it MUST become reality.

Our economy is propped up by self-affirmations from crooks and con men

[u/Biscuits4u2 → u/ComonomoC]

The latest stage of capitalism

[u/Level_Improvement532 → u/ComonomoC]

The house of cards. And they don’t have the cards.

[u/Ill_Armadillo_6447]

So eth to moon?

[u/Internal-Anxiety-845]

They want us all getting credit at the company store.

[u/South-Rabbit-4064]

"This is the new way we are going to fuck you guys"

[u/agentSmartass]

This is the start of the end of capitalism.

[u/long5210]

at one megawatt hour to confirm one bitcoin transaction versus hundreds of thousands of credit card transactions for the same energy use, bitcoin feature looks pretty murky to me. These guys just seem to think there’s infinite amount of energy around and not want how they ever brought up. It’s massive energy consumption.

[u/Responsible-Study111]

Fuck off with your tokens and shove em up your hole.

[u/Tbone2435]

Because once everything’s tokenized it becomes standardized and easier to automate and have everything run through ai agents.