Why BlackRock Is Betting Big on Tokenization And Why It Won’t Happen Overnight
Larry Fink and BlackRock aren’t exactly known for hype so when the CEO and COO write in The Economist that tokenization is the next major evolution in financial markets people listen.
In plain English: they believe putting assets stocks, bonds, real estate, private funds, you name it on blockchains or digital ledgers will eventually make trading faster, cheaper and more transparent. No more waiting days for a trade to settle, no more mountains of paperwork and a lot fewer middlemen taking a cut.
BlackRock’s own tokenized fund BUIDL just hit $2.3 billion in assets which already makes it one of the biggest real world examples out there. Franklin Templeton is doing the same thing with some of its money market funds. The tech clearly works.
But here’s the part everyone skips in the crypto Twitter hype: Fink and his team keep stressing this is a slow burn not a light switch moment. Joshua Chu from the Hong Kong Web3 Association put it well tokenization will creep forward through boring, heavily regulated pilot projects not by suddenly turning the entire planet’s wealth into NFTs next quarter.
The places it’ll hit first? Anything drowning in intermediaries and manual processes. Think commercial real estate, private credit or complex funds where ownership gets passed around like a game of telephone. Tokenization can cut the friction drop the fees and let smaller investors get a piece of assets that used to be locked up for institutions only.
Bottom line: BlackRock isn’t saying crypto is taking over finance tomorrow.They’re saying the plumbing of markets is 50 years out of date blockchain style ledgers can fix it and they plan to be the ones doing the fixing one regulated practical step at a time.